'AITA for not giving my SIL time to find alternative childcare before refusing to watch her son anymore?'
"AITA for not giving my SIL time to find alternative childcare before refusing to watch her son anymore?"
My (28f) husband (33m) has an older half brother (43m) who has a son (4) around our daughter’s age (also 4). My SIL (36f, half-brother’s wife) works, but I do not. I am a SAHM, because my husband worked in his twenties to build two pretty successful local businesses & he works a lot so it’s better for our family for me to stay home.
We also have a farm, so we have lots of land and it’s basically a kid’s dream. My BIL & SIL spent their twenties traveling so they don’t really have their finances in order, they both work & struggle to make ends meet. My husband helps them a lot, but he gets burnt out helping them with things so he generally keeps his distance. He has tried to stay completely out of this issue.
At first, I felt bad for my BIL/SIL so I offered to help them with childcare with my nephew. I do this for free, they don’t pay me anything to watch him. And it was great at first, because my daughter had someone to play with while I took care of farm & house chores.
I quickly realized my nephew is not being parented well. I get that they both work, but they over-indulge him to a point that is kind of ridiculous. He thinks everything is negotiable. No doesn’t mean no, it means scream about it until the adults relent. He cries and screams when he doesn’t get his way. He tests boundaries all the time and constantly tries to push against them.
I see that his mother encourages this behavior, every time he is upset she tries to negotiate with him & usually just gives him what he wants but says “we’ll talk about it later at home when he’s calmed down.”
I roll my eyes at this because I just know it isn’t true, they don’t address anything with him. I know because I spend every weekday with him and I feel like I’m constantly having to re-parent him.
For instance, one huge issue is they have taught him he does not have to share. If he doesn’t want to share a toy, he doesn’t have to. This causes a lot of problems at my house. My rule with my daughter is if you want to hang out with your friends, you have to share.
We put up toys that she genuinely doesn’t want to share, but it’s like two plush toys that are special to her, not all of her toys. Her dad & I have made it clear to her that we buy her toys to share, not to hoard.
I expect the same thing of my nephew, and I have made this clear to him as well. If he brings a toy to my house and he doesn’t want to share, I confiscate the toy so no one plays with it & then I give it to his mom telling her not to let him come back with it.
She has always had an issue with how I handle sharing, she’s tried to coach me on how to properly handle sharing, according to her. She expects me to essentially distract my child with another toy if her son doesn’t want to share.
I made it clear that when he’s at my house he has to follow my rules. I do not entertain them or manage their play, if a toy is causing problems it disappears. Period. They don’t always have to play the same thing at the same time, but if they can’t at least take turns with a toy then it gets put away and if it’s his toy then I tell him it won’t be allowed back.
I have preemptively confiscated toys that I’ve previously said were not allowed back when I’ve seen that he has them again. I used to give him second chances but I quickly learned that it was just teaching him he could undermine my authority.
His mom, however, constantly tries to undermine my authority. Once a week I take them to the park, it’s about a quarter mile down the road from our house so I make the kids walk or ride their scooters or bikes.
My nephew is lazy and always wants to be carried or pushed. I give a firm no, and he cries. But then his mom messaged me saying “(Son) doesn’t want to walk to the park anymore so we came up with a plan, why don’t you take them to the water park that way you all can drive and I’ll leave you his car seat.”
I said, no, because the water park costs money, it’s harder to watch two kids there, and I never agreed to carpool them anywhere. She then found another park on the other side of town and suggested that.
Again, I did not agree to carpool my nephew anywhere. He knew about these attempts at rearranging our plans because he’d bring up how his mom said we could go to another park, and then cry when I tell him I wasn’t open to that.
My nephew has caused a lot of issues that I ultimately blame his parents for, like taking one bite out of every strawberry in the bowl just to be spiteful so my daughter couldn’t have any. That has happened multiple times with multiple snacks.
Trying to sneakily steal toys and then his mom asking if he can borrow it when I check his bag and call him out on it. But my final straw with my nephew was when he started trying to encourage my daughter to push boundaries with me.
I’d tell him he couldn’t do something like climbing up the gate to the horse pasture and he’ll just look at me then say “(Daughter) climb up here with me.” He’s been doing this for a few weeks now & I told his mother that if he was going to encourage my daughter to disrespect my rules he would not be allowed back over.
She essentially tried to defend him saying “it’s age appropriate.” She really just brushed it all off. Well, it happened again yesterday. We were baking cookies & he decided to throw chocolate chips across the room.
I told him to stop and he ignored me and told my daughter to throw them with him. She was scared to do it because she knew it was against my rules, so then he had an absolute meltdown when I took him away from the kitchen & put him in time out.
He actually started throwing things around my living room and screaming at me. He kept coming back into the kitchen and I had to physically remove him over and over again. I have never had these issues with my own kid so I was losing my mind. I called my SIL & my BIL ended up coming to pick him up early. I told him he wasn’t welcome back, that I was done.
Maybe I’m an AH for reaching my breaking point & not giving them more notice, but I thought I was being helpful. And I gave them plenty of warnings that his behavior was not acceptable or appropriate in my home. I gave advice on how to parent a little better, maybe that makes me an AH since he’s not my kid but I don’t know.
I told her he wouldn’t be allowed back multiple times, but this time I mean it. My SIL thinks I’m an AH because I refuse to acknowledge that our children are just different, and he’s not a bad kid he just has a different temperament than my daughter.
I don’t think he’s a bad kid, I think he’s always been allowed to misbehave and he’s been taught that if he has a violent screaming & throwing meltdown then he’ll get his way. She’s mostly mad saying that she doesn’t have time to figure out what she’s going to do with him, and she wants me to finish off the week.
I just simply have reached my limit and do not want to continue watching him, even for just a few more days. So AITA for not giving them a week to find another childcare option, should I have given them more notice/time or am I justified?
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
While it would be 'nice' of you to give her notice and enough time to find alternate arrangements . . . it also would have been 'nice' if she respected your parenting and free daycare. You provide free daycare. She should accept it for what it is and shut her mouth or pay for a daycare provider that will put up with both his and her behaviour.
Girl, BLESS YOUR PATIENCE. Absolutely not. If they want to make a monster of that child, & not teach him basic life skills, then they deal with the beast of their own making.
As a former preschool teacher, I can tell you that with THAT many warnings and issues he would be asked to leave the school. I can’t wait for mom and son to find out all the rules he will be expected to follow at school.
NTA. They had plenty of warning. I'd also be very blunt with them: that nephew isn't a bad kid; he just has bad parents who don't set and enforce rules and that they are ruining his life because no one else will tolerate his behaviors.
Hell no. You’re a saint. F them.
The SIL wants you to parent her child, but doesn't want to change her parenting skills. The child either abides by the rules of the house, or the parent needs to find suitable accommodations, period. NTA.