A woman who has repeatedly struggled to manage her nephew’s chaotic behavior says she already told her sister she couldn’t babysit him anymore.

But now that the sister is scheduled for surgery and claims she has “no one else,” the pressure is suddenly back on.

When the woman refused and even offered to pay for a sitter instead, her sister called her a “selfish cow” and the rest of the family started piling on.

AITA for refusing to care for sister’s kid during surgery?

My sister (34F) has a kid (6M) who has always been rude to me (36F).

He has called me names cause I’m overweight and whenever he’s been at mine he has just made a mess, screamed, he left the fridge door open and threw food on the floor once, he just seems to have some kind of behavioural issue.

Yikes.

I told my sister I don’t want to look after him again cause I can’t control him. I’m not a parent and I just don’t know what the right tactics are.

She was okay with it as she has other friends who can take care of him.

Thing is she is now about to go into hospital for a surgery which will have her out for a few days and she’s telling me there is nobody who can look after my nephew for that time.

Uh oh.

Now I don’t know what to do because while of course I would take vacation time for family but I don’t have much left and to be honest, I don’t want to be spending it dealing with a kid who just won’t give me any respect.

I told my sister I’m not happy to do it and said I’d be OK to pay for a babysitter but she just called me a selfish cow.

Geez.

Others in the family have since texted with various stances, asking me to please reconsider or asking why I am being like this.

As if I’m meant to magically figure out how to stop him destroying my house or just put up with it.

AITA for just not wanting to deal with it even though it’s to help my sister with a medical issue?

Most Redditors sided with the woman, noting that refusing an unmanageable childcare responsibility doesn’t make her heartless, especially when she offered a practical solution.

This person says it’s obvious the nephew is learning from his awful mother.

This person says they’d do things a LOT differently than the sister.

And this person has a lot of practical questions.

When “help your sister” turns into “sacrifice your sanity,” boundaries beat babysitting.

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.