April 9, 2024 at 5:34 am

She Agreed To Watch Her Sister’s Young Son, But When Her Sister Didn’t Show Up When She Said She Would… She Left The Boy Completely Alone

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/AITA/Unsplash/@marcusneto

Is 4-years-old too young to leave a kid alone?

Well, I guess we’re about to find out!

Because this woman did that and now she’s in hot water with her sister.

Was she out of line?

Get the story below and see what you think.

AITA for leaving my 4-year-old nephew unsupervised?

“I (26F) have a 28F sister, let’s call her J.

J is a mother to three kids, aged 4, 7 and 8 years old.

Her sister is in a tough spot.

The father is a really absent parent and not around much, he works the night shift and then sleeps all day. I feel bad for her because it definitely isn’t a fair situation and she doesn’t get any time to herself.

Anyway, the situation is this: my sister invited me to hang out on Saturday night. I agreed to come around and hang out with her, but she said she would have to leave to run an errand at some point. Cool.

She said she’d be half an hour so could I look after the sleeping youngest child while she quickly nipped out? I reluctantly agreed.

The other two kids had been dropped off at our parents for the weekend, so I understood she would want some time to run an errand she normally wouldn’t have time for. As long as it was only half an hour. She promised it would be.

I come over, we chat and catch up and watch a movie. It’s really pleasant until she says she has to leave for That Errand, and leaves me Instructions of what to do in case the kid wakes up but says to just call her because she’s only around the corner.

This was tricky…

I’m really on edge about it because I struggle a lot with really bad anxiety and panic disorder, which I’m currently in therapy for and experimenting with meds to manage, however we haven’t found anything that really works yet.

She knows this and knows I would really panic and cannot look after a kid for longer than she initially promised.

I’m just not there mentally to be able to deal with crying for example.

Anyway half an hour passes and she isn’t back yet.

45 mins. I call her and ask if everything is OK and when she will be back, and she answers after multiple rings.

She said something came up and she’d be another hour, maybe an hour and 15.

She put her foot down.

I basically lose my **** and say if she’s not back in 15 minutes then I’m leaving.

She said I wouldn’t do that and to please just stay there and hung up.

At this point I’m on the verge of having a panic attack so do my breathing exercises, ring her husband, leave a message when he doesn’t answer, text him about the situation as well and also text my mom and leave after 15 minutes as I said I would.

That really set things off…

Apparently my sister didn’t come home for another 2 hours and when she did her husband was with the child and they are both fuming.

He got my message 15 minutes after I left, so 30 minutes after I sent it and now both of them are refusing to talk to me, saying I endangered the child’s life.

I feel like me staying would have been worse because the kid slept through it all and a panic attack may have woken him up to find me a dysfunctional mess.

AITA here?”

Check out what folks had to say about this.

This person thinks they all SUCK.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual thinks the sister is to blame.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This reader agreed that everyone sucks.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual shared their thoughts.

Source: Reddit/AITA

And this Reddit user thinks they know what her sister was really up to…

Source: Reddit/AITA

It seems like things are gonna be tense between these two for a long time…

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.