It’s always difficult to confront someone in regards to how they’re raising their child.

In this story from Reddit, a concerned aunt stands up to her sister, but it might have been too little, too late.

Let’s take a look!

AITA for telling my sister that she is ruining her child’s life with an iPad?

My sister (36F) and her husband have a 10-year-old kid (who for the purposes of this post is called “Jimothy”) who me and my husband sometimes babysit on the weekends and on some days I take him to school.

As of about a year ago, we started to notice that Jimothy was beginning to develop an American accent.

We are Australian.

A little odd to be sure, but kids go through phases.

Small kids have phases, and so I didn’t want to make it “a thing”.

Over the next few months, the accent got thicker and Jimothy became more irritable.

Me and my husband brought this up with my sister, who said that Jimothy wasn’t very grumpy when with her.

He then started losing interest in almost all activities that he used to enjoy.

Again, this was a concern for me. Every weekend it got worse.

He would complain of being bored but when we offered an exhaustive list of all the things we could do with him, he said no to every single one.

Some things can be written off to development phases, but the author felt like there was something more going on.

The school year for 2024 started, and on the weekend after that Jimothy told us that his teacher and a few classmates had asked him how long he’d been in the US before moving to Australia.

At this point his American accent was indistinguishable from a General American accent.

My husband and I were really wondering what was happening.

Then, it was Jimothy’s birthday party. His family was invited, including me, and so were all his friends.

This was the moment that made me realise to some extent what was going on.

He was on an iPad, scrolling some kind of short-form content that I did not recognize.

His friends wanted to play with him, and he just did not notice they were there.

People were giving him presents, and he acted like he was inconvenienced for having to turn the iPad off.

Never before had any of my nieces or nephews reacted like this upon me giving them money and delicious treats.

There is obviously a problem here, but when she confronts her sister about it, things got contentious.

I told my sister that something was going on, and that Jimothy is obviously not in a good way.

She seemed very offended that I was “questioning her parenting choices” as she put it, and she decided that me and my husband babysitting Jimothy had to stop.

The next time I saw Jimothy was very recently, at my niece’s birthday party (different parents).

Jimothy was completely glued to the iPad. He was noticeably skinnier, which I suspect was because he was forgetting to eat in favour of iPad time.

And when anyone went over to talk to him, he would almost instinctively push the screen towards his body so nobody could see.

Now there are some health and potential other issues adding fuel to the fire.

I had to talk to my sister and her husband.

I told them what I thought, that a year ago Jimothy was an energetic child who got along really well with everyone, and now he’s reclusive and it’s obvious from just looking at him that he’s skipping meals.

My sister denied any changes in Jimothy’s behaviour, but her husband did admit that I was right to some extent, and Jimothy’s friends had stopped trying to hang out with him because he said no 100% of the time.

I told my sister she was wrecking Jimothy’s life by continuing to let this iPad stuff happen.

She started shouting at me, and I walked out of the party.

It sounds like she was just trying to help, but let’s see what Reddit thinks.

The top comment thinks that parts of this story seem normal development-wise, but there has to be something more going on.

Another commenter, who works in children’s mental health, is very worried about what the nephew might be watching.

This comment has some serious concerns about the why behind the what; there’s clearly more to the story and it might be something very bad.

Technology has truly become a blight on society, especially in young people, says this comment.

The whole family needs help, according to this commenter.

For this family, the iPad may have well gone from addiction to something more sinister.

This kid needs some help, for sure.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.