When you have a family, if you agree to do a favor for someone, sometimes the whole family actually ends up taking part in that favor whether they want to or not.

In today’s story, the favor is watching a neighbor’s daughter before school, but the kids of the person who agreed to this favor don’t like this favor at all.

Let’s see how it all plays out.

AITA for refusing to watch my neighbor’s kid before school because she kept nagging me?

I F35 am a stay at home mom with two kids “John” M10 and “Ava” F8.

My neighbor “Zoe” F42 works full time and asked at the beginning of the school year if she could drop off her daughter “Sue” F9 an hour before school started twice a week.

I agreed and was happy to help out a neighbor.

However, things got bad pretty quickly.

The kids have different interests.

My kids do not get along well with Sue and see entertaining her as a chore.

Both of my kids enjoy sports, arts, and playing outside, while Sue is glued to her phone.

Despite this, Sue pouts when my kids do their own thing instead of trying to engage her.

Zoe doesn’t seem to like OP’s parenting choices.

Zoe called me a few weeks into the school year to nag me for having the kids walk/bike to school, saying it was unsafe and asking me to drive Sue.

I told her no–if Sue was old enough to have a phone she was old enough to walk/bike to school.

A week later, she asked me to cook real sausage for Sue in addition to veggie sausage I make for my kids (my husband and I don’t buy meat).

I told her no–Sue could eat what I cook but if she wanted specific food she would have to prepare it herself.

These requests don’t sound too crazy.

For the first semester of school, Zoe nagged me with similar requests.

Don’t play songs with explicit lyrics, don’t let multiple kids on the trampoline simultaneously, watch the kids when they’re outside, etc.

When I refused, she was respectful and would be like “sorry to bother you” but she still had new requests every week.

She told Zoe she was not going to change her parenting style for Sue.

At the end of the semester, I told her I was not going to make adjustments to our family lifestyle and inconvenience my family for the sake of her child.

Sue’s safety was not at risk.

If she was unsatisfied with Sue’s situation, there were plenty of other people in the neighborhood who could watch her.

Zoe seemed really receptive, and I was hopeful that would be the end of her nagging.

The kids really don’t like Sue.

When my kids got home on December 20th, I asked, “Are you excited for 2.5 weeks with no school?”

And John responded “I’m more excited for 2.5 weeks with no Sue.”

Ava nodded and giggled along.

It broke my heart to know that they were more happy to get a break from Sue than school.

Zoe really seems to need OP’s help.

Just a couple of days ago, Zoe reached out to me thanking me for agreeing to watch Sue and asking if I could watch her a couple afternoons a week in addition so Zoe could have some “me” time.

I told her this would no longer work–our kids did not mesh well and I didn’t want to deal with more inappropriate requests.

I thought Zoe might be mad, but instead she just begged me to watch Sue at least one morning a week.

She apologized profusely and said I could parent however I wanted to.

She isn’t sure if she made the right decision.

This made me feel bad because she genuinely needed my help and did not know what she would do.

I told her I knew I could and that her apology was too little too late.

My husband and kids stand by my decision, but some of the other moms think I should have been more accommodating, saying I’m selfish, that moms help moms and I’ll never know when I might need help.

Does my refusal to help Zoe make me a jerk?

When the kids are more excited about a break from Sue than a break from school, that’s when you know it’s time to stop letting Sue come over.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person thinks she made the right decision.

Zoe could’ve offered to babysit once in awhile.

Zoe ignored boundaries too many times.

This person thinks she was kind.

It’s hard to babysit if the kids don’t get along.

Sometimes you just have to say no.

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.