My(39m) wife(40f) and I have an almost 1-year-old baby. We currently live in the same house as my mom and stepdad, but we are in the process of moving out.
There has been tension and negative history between my wife and my stepdad, so I’m trying to be careful about being bias while still taking child safety seriously. My wife saw some behavior on camera that made her concerned about possible grooming or inappropriate behavior. To me this is just a cultural/older-generation behavior especially being an immigrant(56m) from Vietnam.
For context, we had already asked him to stop kissing/touching the baby’s face, but he continued doing it. At the same time, he has not really sought access to the baby, does not ask to hold him, and has only held him a handful of times in the year we’ve lived here. He also has not asked us to bring the baby downstairs; it usually only happens when my mom/grandma asked to see him and bring him down stairs. For the almost year of life we've had him they've only seen him only a handful of times, probably under 6 total hours spent down stairs.
We are showing the footage to the appropriate agencies/professionals for review after his 1yo birthday party in 2 weeks.
I’m looking for outside perspective: what signs would you look for, what professionals should review this, and how would you handle family contact while waiting for the footage to be reviewed?
I have a link to the nest footage. It's literally just Grandpa holding is grandson on his lap. I find nothing absolutely wrong with it and find everything pretty normal, there are some other parts that are concerning but not in that manner, more rough housing if anything. If that.
If there are any specialist that want to take a look and help me ease my mind, ive showed some friends that work in healthcare and some that delt with kids before and they all say it looks pretty normal.
It's really killing me inside that this is happening more so because I know that nothing is happening but wife on the other hand feels 100% right on her end. So I'm playing this balancing act of not dismissing her concerns while not completing imploding. This is probably one of the lowest points in my life because this will blow up me and my family's relationship. If this gets to my mom even if wife is wrong or right this again will blow up me and my family. It's such a horrid accusation to make while I feel she is completely wrong.
There are more layers to this but this is the short version 😑
TLDR
wife thinls there is possible grooming between step Grandpa and our 11 month old baby. She saw our home nest cam and concluded from that footage. I have a link to the footage and would like some input from a specialist if possible.