There are some people you wouldn’t let watch your children if they were the last available baby sitter on Earth!
Criminals are top of that list, but even higher is anyone with the ridiculous belief that babies can’t feel any pain and shouldn’t be checked on while they’re crying. That’s like childcare 101.
Well that’s exactly what this user’s sister-in-law believed, and exactly why OP had no intention of ever leaving her alone with her infant child!
Was she wrong to refuse to let her sister-in-law babysit? Decide for yourself!
AITA for refusing to let my sister-in-law babysit my baby and being unwilling to hear her out?
My husband and I had to be somewhere for our older child so we asked my mother-in-law if she could watch our 3 month old son for a few hours.
She said of course. Unfortunately when we went to drop him off, she wasn’t home and one of my husband’s sisters Jane (21) was instead.
Apparently my mother-in-law wasn’t going to be home for a bit so she (Jane) agreed to watch our son for some time.
But OP wasn’t about to let Jane anywhere near her baby boy….
I immediately said no because well Jane believes that babies don’t feel anything.
She thinks that they cry for no reason and we shouldn’t respond to their cries ever for whatever reason. And that not responding won’t have any effect on them.
She thinks that anything we do to babies during this period of their lives will have absolutely 0 effect on them in the future. She will often call them mindless too.
My husband called his mom and we politely explained our concerns and then hung up because we were extremely busy already (and now we had to find another babysitter as well).
And when Jane heard that she had lost the babysitting gig, she was none too happy…
I figured that was it until Jane came over extremely upset and in tears insisting that she’s not a bad person and that she would never do anything to hurt any kid.
She then accused me of “discriminating” against her because she doesn’t want/have kids like everyone else in the family.
I told her straight up that I don’t care if she wants kids of her own, but I don’t like her thoughts on how to care for babies specifically.
Jane wasn’t hearing any of what OP had to say….
Instead of trying to understand me, she doubled down and said that her way of dealing with babies makes sense.
And that I’m wrong and I’m just extremely sensitive in nature so of course I don’t get it.
She kept arguing with me about how to take care of my baby so I just asked her to leave and she blew up on me.
My husband even told her to calm down and that it’s not like we’re preventing her from seeing our kids all together.
But Jane wasn’t anywhere near calm, not even in the general vicinity!
but she just went “screw you and your dumb kids” and left. Which… okay… ?
But my mother-in-law is really annoyed with me because Jane is still very upset and I’m just wondering if I’m the AH?
Like I don’t think I am especially since no one lets her babysit for the same reasons but I’m the first person to actually say no to her face and tell her why instead of making up an excuse…
Wow she sounds like a real prize! Hard to believe OP wouldn’t want to leave her infant son with someone so levelheaded and reasonable!
Reddit told her that she wasn’t in the wrong one bit, and that Jane knew exactly why she couldn’t watch OP’s son.
This user thought that if anyone was to blame for the whole situation, it was OP’s mother-in-law.
Many thought that Jane needed to do some research into child development.
And finally, this user thought that grandma should be off babysitting duty for the rest of her life!
Perpetually angry and doesn’t think babies deserve any care? She sounds like a great babysitter!
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.