'AITA for ignoring my kid’s screeching tantrums while at home?' Niece sent video.
'AITA for ignoring my kid’s screeching tantrums while at home?'
I’m (31F) and a stay at home mom. My son is 3-years-old and my daughter is 6-months-old. My husband’s niece, Jessica (19F) stays at our place 3-4 days a week because she goes to university close to our place. When she’s not here she goes back to stay with her mom (my SIL).
Jessica doesn’t pay rent or do house chores, although her mom sometimes gives us about $100 to help with bills just whenever she can.
Onto the problem.
So my house is pretty noisy. My daughter would cry if she’s not physically on me. Most of the time I would always carry her around so she wouldn’t cry.
But on the daily whenever I have to bathe my son, I would leave her in her crib and she would scream cry like the world is ending. This usually happens about 15-20 minutes a day. And she’s safe, she just doesn’t like not being with me. Once I pick her up she would stop crying instantly.
On top of that my son would throw tantrums pretty often. At home, I just ignore him and let him screech scream and thrash around. To be fair, my son’s scream would pierce your ears.
Sometimes I have to wear noise cancelling headphones and cover my daughter’s ears while he’s throwing tantrums. And he does it a lot, like 3-4 times a week. Sometimes it happens twice a day. He usually would calm down after an hour, the longest was two hours.
There’s one particular night when Jessica was in the kitchen washing her dishes, and my son was in the living room just beside the kitchen. He was throwing a really bad tantrum because I wanted him to say “please”.
If this was a sort of public space or if it was another person's house, I would turn on youtube and he would calm down right away. But because we’re at home, I thought he should learn to navigate his big feelings without youtube.
He screamed, screeched, thrashed around like a mad man, while I was at the dining table eating my dinner, just a couple steps away from him. Sometimes he took rests from screaming and I gave him water, but once he started screaming again I left him again and went back to continuing my dinner.
When he stops screaming I would ask if he’s done, then I’d hold his hand and say something like “Repeat after me: Mom open the box please,” but if he starts screaming again I would leave again. This continued for about an hour an a half.
Jessica secretly recorded some of it (me calmly eating while watching my son screeching), and she sent it to her family group chat that I am not a part of. She didn’t say anything to me—we typically pretend the other doesn’t exist. She also didn’t say anything when sending the video.
My husband was offended by her sending the video as if she was ratting me out. But other SIL said maybe I should do something to calm my kids when they’re clearly in distress. She knows it happens a lot, which means Jessica had said something to them before.
They’re now fighting. Other family members chose not to get involved. I don’t think I’m wrong but AITA for ignoring my kid’s tantrums?
Here were the top rated comments from readers:
NTA. Disengaging while monitoring your son to be sure he’s safe is fine. You’re not neglecting him. You’re teaching him that tantrums don’t get attention. He will grow out of it, but it seems Jessica will always be a sneaky…person.
Edited to add: I’m also going to speculate that your son is jealous of the attention the baby is getting. Toddlers don’t know how to express their feelings; he wants your attention, especially as the baby is on you 24/7.
Yes - Jessica needs to learn she can't air the family's internal issues and still expect to be able to stay there. That is an important lesson for her to know before going out into the world.
Also I want to recommend the book 'Calm down time' for the OP. It helped my toddler figure out ways to deal with his big emotions. I'm not saying we never have fits anymore - but he's been doing a lot better.
NTA. What your houseguest did is not acceptable and I would no longer entertain them.
I also fully agree with your parenting here. Reassurance and soothing is fine to some extent, but feeding into negative behaviour from the child as a way to get reassurance and actively calmed just teaches them that they only need to escalate their behaviour to get a positive reward.
Placid, calm and clear direction that they can choose to say please or not get what they want is the way.
Edit: I also hate the use of the word distress. Fall and hurt yourself - appropriate distress, needs cuddles and positive reinforcement. Deliberately choose to behave in a way that results in not getting exactly what you want - inappropriate distress, needs calm reinforcement of reasoning why they aren't getting what they want.
Although I agree in general with you, I think you’re doing a lot of assuming regarding the emotional and mental capabilities of a three year old. What they’re doing is not malicious, they simply aren’t saying please and the moment they calm down mom asks again which sets off the behaviour again.
There does come a point when tactics need to be switched. For us it’s “all you need to do is say please and then you’ll be fine” but for then it’s much more complex than that, it doesn’t always just click and maybe more time is needed in between calming down to restate the lesson at hand.
Definitely not judging anyone and don’t think this is neglect. Niece shouldn’t have done what she did. Just maybe there is a different way to approach this if it’s happening so often and clearly not working in the long term to get the lesson of needing to say please reaffirmed.
I think part of the problem you’re having here is that you’re trying to set your son up with different rules when you are out to when you are home. So now he just thinks that he’s got to hold out for longer before you resort to YouTube to reward his tantrums but doesn’t understand that option is off the table.
It’s also very likely, since he’s of an age where kids start developing the ability to feel jealousy, that he is still adjusting to having a new sibling in the home and is seeking attention because of that and exaggerating his bad behaviour for that reason.
So he probably needs for you to arrange some one on one time without his sister there where you are doing something fun rather than having her present and in your arms or having to do some necessity like his bath during the only time he gets with you. That isn’t an a**%$le situation but is something to bear in mind.
But your niece is of an age where if she can see you struggling she should be offering to hold the baby for a half hour while she watches tv or something to help you get that time with your son, and she should be talking to you about it if she’s having difficulty dealing with the noise rather than just telling tales to family and causing further disruption. NTA.
OP responded after reading the comments:
Thank you everyone, all the the NTAs and the YTAs give me insights and new perspectives. I also received some great tips I’ll start implementing soon. I will now stop responding to comments and log out of this throwaway account. Have a good day/night!