Woman Caring for Sister’s Daughter Says She’s Being Accused of Keeping Them Apart

Matthew Gilligan

3 minutes ago

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Dealing with a family member with addiction problems puts a lot of pressure on their loved ones.

That might sound like the understatement of the century, but it’s true.

And that situation gets even more intense and complicated when there are kids involved.

Most of us only want what’s best for young people during their formative years and, sadly, if their parent is reckless and potentially dangerous, we do our best to keep them as far away as possible.

In today’s story, a woman talked about why she has kept her troubled sister at a distance from her daughter. Predictably, this has led to some a lot of tension.

Read her story below and see what you think about what she had to say.

AITA for ending my niece’s visit with her mom early?

“My sister lost custody of her 3 kids (1, 3, and 6) last year after her youngest was born with drugs in his system.

Her husband was in the army at the time and had no clue about her drug use. When he found out he left and took the younger two. The oldest is not his biological child so my husband and I took her in.

She’s doing her best in a tough situation.

My husband and I have tried to maintain a relationship with my sister for my niece. We meet up with her at the park or at restaurants and allowed her to attend my niece’s kindergarten graduation.

My niece has a tendency to cling to me and my husband when her mom is around.

Since my sister has been clean for a couple months, we decided to try out an overnight visit at her apartment. My husband and I were going to stay on the pull out couch in the living room and my niece was going to stay in the spare bedroom.

We did our bedtime routine as normal, plus we had my sister read a couple stories, and tucked her in at 7:30.

She came out at 8 saying that she couldn’t sleep. I took her back to bed for more stories and songs and even stayed with her until she fell asleep, which didn’t happen until 8:40. She was up again by 9.

My husband tried tucking her in and after she refused to lay down in her bed, he put her in our bed between me and him. More stories, more songs, more warm milk, TV was on to act as a night light and sound machine and she still wouldn’t sleep.

Sometimes, you gotta cut your losses…

We made it to 10:30, then I packed up while my husband went to tell my sister that we were taking our niece home because she couldn’t sleep.

She was out within 5 minutes once we got her in the car. We considered going back to my sister’s apartment but didn’t want to risk waking her up the second we put her down so we just went home.

She’s slept in our bed since that night and clings to both of us now. I haven’t been able to take her to summer camp because she melts down when I try to leave.

I called my sister the other day to tell her that we’re going to scale back on visits due to the aftermath of our overnight visit attempt.

Yikes, this doesn’t sound good…

My sister is convinced that we turned our niece against her and is now trying to get my niece placed with another family member because we’re trying to “sabotage her recovery” and “steal her daughter”.

Now we have family saying that we need to try harder to get our niece to be comfortable with her mom and that she wouldn’t have refused to sleep there if we wouldn’t have done anything to convince her that it was unsafe.

Now I’m wondering if we should be trying harder on her relationship with her mom instead of scaling back on visits.”

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man whose celebratory post-grad school vacation is being ruined by his family’s insistence he’s being lazy.

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This reader said she’s NTA.