One mom opens her home daily to all the cousins after school—but drama hit when her sister’s son didn’t want to join the others outside and ended up sulking solo.

Should she have forced her kids to stay inside with him? Her sister thinks so.

Read on for the story.

Aitah for not forcing my kids to play inside with my nephew?

I am 38F I have 4 kids ages 16M, 14M, 12M, and 3F. My sister (35F) has one kid age 12M. I also have a brother (30M) whose kids are 4M & 10M.

After school every day all of the kids come to my house until their parents get off of work.

3F isn’t in preschool yet so she is home all day and 4M does half days preschool I pick him up at 12. I have a little fenced in play area for the babies and spend most of my time there.

How cute.

When the kids all get off the bus I normally have a snack ready and then most of them go outside and find somewhere to play.

My kids are pretty feral. 99% of the time they are headed straight for the woods to “the fort.” My brother’s oldest usually does whatever my kids are up to.

The issue is my sister’s son. He does not like to be outside and mostly sits on the couch and either watches TV or plays on his phone. Every now and then he will go play with the others by it’s rare and he’s back inside pretty quickly. He is just not an outside kid.

Hmph.

Yesterday my nephew was upset because the others did not want to stay inside and watch a movie with him. He asked them and they all just wanted to go outside.

When my sister came to pick him up he told her the other kids wouldn’t watch a movie with him and he didn’t want to play what they were playing.

So my sister is now upset and said all the other kids are excluding him and I should have made them stay with him instead.

Oh brother.

I told her my kids don’t like to watch TV. They are working on their fort( there was a storm recently so they are rebuilding it) and enjoying being outside

. If it were raining or something sure I could have made them come inside but it was a nice day so I’m not forcing 4 boys to stay in the house just because her kid wants to stay in the house.

It was his decision not to go with them. They didn’t say he couldn’t they asked him if he wanted to go.

100%.

Well now my sister and her husband are both upset and believe I am allowing my children/nephew to exclude their son.

Idk if I’m an a****** here but I didn’t feel like it was appropriate to force teenage/ preteen boys to sit inside and watch a movie when they wanted to be outside.

She chose not to force four energetic boys indoors just because one cousin preferred screen time over outdoor play.

Now she’s dealing with angry texts and guilt trips from her sister and brother-in-law, but Reddit had her back.

This person says how DARE the sister say a word after what OP does for her.

This person is all about the kid-playing-outdoors life and wouldn’t dare shut it down.

And this person says it would be wild disadvantage to do it the way the sister suggested.

He chose the couch over cousin chaos—now she’s the villain for letting kids be kids?

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