Balancing a work life with maintaining healthy relationships is hard, and sometimes, it involves saying no.

A woman shares, though, that when she said no to her sister-in-law’s request to take her daughter to school, it became everyone else’s problem, and now she’s wondering if she’s in the wrong for saying no.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for telling my SIL to walk her daughter to school?

I (f23) am a university graduate and live at home with my mother. She owns the house with a mortgage that’s been fully paid off.

I pay her rent (around half of the market rate for our area) and do most of the housework.

Me and my mother both work a lot, I work in healthcare and work irregular shift patterns and my mum is self-employed and occasionally has to travel for work.

My brother (m31), his wife “Rose” (f31) and their daughter (f6) moved back into our mum’s house on Friday.

They got a mortgage on a home but it turned out to have a lot of maintenance issues, the biggest ones being with their toilet and shower not functioning.

Also their heating doesn’t work. It’s estimated to take at least a month to fix everything so in the meantime, they’re staying here.

But their presence meant another job for her.

Rose came to me and asked if I could take their daughter to school, as her school is a 5-minute drive from the hospital.

Normally their neighbour (who has a child the same age) would take her to school but that’s no longer an option.

My brother works full-time and his shifts clash with doing this (he starts at 7am) and he and Rose share a car, as she only works one shift a week on Sundays.

I told Rose that I can’t commit to taking my niece to school every day.

She needs to be dropped off at school for 8 AM, and sometimes I’m doing overnight shifts that don’t finish until 9-10 AM or I’m doing shifts that start really early in the morning.

But things got tense when she said no.

Rose got a bit upset and asked why I can’t just explain to my boss that I need to be available for school drop-off.

She didn’t wait for an answer and said she knows it’s not that simple but she needs me to help her.

In my job, if you start requesting restricted availability, they will give you way fewer shifts.

I couldn’t understand why Rose wouldn’t walk her daughter to school, as it’s a 15-minute walk from our mum’s house to get there, with no hills and plenty of safe crossings.

Rose and their daughter don’t have any health conditions that would make this not doable.

She tried reasoning with her, but it didn’t go well.

I asked Rose why she wouldn’t walk her daughter to school and she said that is too far to walk with a young child.

I showed her the distance on Google maps (I assumed she wasn’t aware of how close it was) and she reiterated that it was too far.

I said to Rose I think that’s her best option but I cannot take her daughter to school every day.

Later that day my mum told me that Rose came to her really upset that I refused to help.

My mum said she knows I normally work irregular shifts but that it’d be a really nice thing for me to do.

I feel like I’m going crazy because when I was a kid I went to the same school and my mum walked me there and back from this house!!

I said no and my mum said ‘that’s fine, I understand’.

Now I’ve got my brother calling me selfish and he said it’s a small ask that even their neighbour could do it and I’m refusing.

AITA???

She could try walking at least once before asking other people to inconvenience themselves.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this.

A reader shares their opinion.

Genius.

Yup.

Another reader shares their opinion.

Her responsibility.

More good advice.

Rose needs a solution that doesn’t involve someone risking their livelihood.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.