When you live in a neighborhood with families that have kids, it is nice to help by watching them when you can.

What would you do if you agreed to watch one young girl after school for an hour each day, but then the mom kept making demands on how you did it?

That is what happened to the mom in this story, so she finally said she couldn’t watch her anymore, and now the other mother is stuck trying to find a new babysitter.

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.

That shouldn’t be a big deal.

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.

Well, she is 8. She should be able to watch TV or whatever.

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.

Ok, she wants to feel included.

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

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.

Walking will be good for her.

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).

Again, this is very reasonable.

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

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

If you want free babysitting, you can’t make demands all the time.

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.

And nobody should expect her to.

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.

Good, hopefully it will be smooth sailing from now on.

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

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.”

Kids say mean things sometimes.

Ava nodded and giggled along. It broke my heart to know that they were more happy to get a break from Sue than school.

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 can’t believe she asked for more free babysitting just for ‘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.

Um yeah, of course she can parent how she wants.

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

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.

She was helpful for a long time, let the other moms take their turn.

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.

AITA?

No, it sounds like she was polite and more than helpful by watching her for so long. Then she ended it in a reasonable way.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

She would never just let things go. She’ll always ask for more.

She can stay home on her own for an hour.

Exactly, she already did a lot.

I thought this was odd as well.

Yeah, they don’t need to put up with this anymore.

Sorry, Mom, it’s time to take care of your own kid.

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.