Most people don’t mind helping out friends and family now and again. In fact, when it comes to watching kids, a majority of aunts, uncles, and those of the honorary variety are happy to do it.
That said, it can rub folks the wrong way if they’re going the extra mile to help while the parents aren’t pulling their own weight.
OP is a younger sister and loves being an aunt. She helps out her sister regularly and doesn’t expect pay, though she does often get nice gifts by way of thanks.
My older sister doesn’t pay me to babysit, but she will randomly take me on expensive shopping sprees and will regularly buy things from my Amazon wishlist instead, and I have no problem with this arrangement.
I really love those kids and don’t have an issue babysitting them, I love hanging out with them.
One day she arrived to babysit because her sister had a work emergency to find her sister’s husband – the kids’ father – locked in a room playing video games.
On this day I, (17F) sister (34F), called me saying that her work had an emergency and she needs to get there ASAP and needed me to watch her kids because “no one else can”.
I rushed over there just to find her husband locked in his game room playing video games. I asked her why she called me over if he was home and she said he didn’t want to “babysit” because it was his only day off.
Sister left, and I started hanging with the kids.
When her hands were overfull, she sent the kids to ask him for a snack.
He sent them back to her, and then gave her a hard time about not being able to handle them when he emerged to make lunch (for himself).
I was changing the baby’s diaper and the other kids wanted a snack, I told them to go ask their dad to make them a snack since the baby had a blow out and it was going to take my awhile to clean him up.
Well their dad sent them back upstairs and told them to ask me again. After cleaning the baby up I made the kids a snack and their dad came out to eat and told me not to let the kids interrupt him on his day off. (By the way, he works part time from home, 6 days a week).
She called him out on being a terrible, lazy father and he snapped back about her being disrespectful.
I kind of snapped at him and told him it was MY day off too and that he’s a useless father and husband if his wife has to rely on her teenage sister rather than her own husband.
He started telling me I was disrespectful and didn’t understand how hard parenting is, and I told him he clearly doesn’t understand how hard it is either since he considers parenting his own children “babysitting”.
Now, he’s saying she’s not going to be allowed around the kids at all unless she apologizes, but OP isn’t sorry.
He ended up kicking me out and apparently my sister was forced to come home because he told her she needed to figure it out since I’m her sister.
I feel like I may be wrong because my sister is mad at me, her husband is mad at me, my mom is mad at me for causing drama, but my dad thinks it’s funny and agrees with me.
I definitely didn’t need to call him names but I just hate this guy so much. We have argued about things in the past as well so we already don’t have a great relationship.
My sister is saying I need to apologize to him and he is threatening to never let me into the kids lives if I keep disrespecting him.
Should she be? Should she apologize for the sake of the kids?
Also, I did not yell at him in front of his kids. It was a private conversation.
I might post an update but nothing has really happened in the past day so I don’t really have much to say. No one has apologized to anyone yet.
Reddit is going to let her know!
There’ a difference between an emergency an enabling, this commenter says.
This person also wants to state that it’s not babysitting if it’s your kids.
They say all she was doing was telling the hard truth.
And this commenter hopes that one day, everyone who wants to will be able to leave.
Because there is no day off from parenting.
This guy sounds like a real piece of work.
Too bad it doesn’t seem as if OP’s comments were a wakeup call.