Building a great relationship with your nieces and nephews can be very rewarding for both the aunt and the kids.

What happens when the number of niblings starts getting too high to have them all at the same time, but your families love it when you take them?

That is what the Aunt in this story is experiencing, and she is starting to feel bad for not continuing her tradition of taking all the kids.

Check it out.

AITA for refusing to bring back the full auntie/niblings day even though it would help out my SIL out?

I [24F] am the youngest to 3 brothers [36M], [34M], [31M].

Yes, I was the surprise baby and yes, I was coddled growing up.

They’re all married and I get along really well with my SILs.

Between the 3 of them, I have 7 niblings all of them under 10 and one of my SILs is pregnant with the 8th.

She’s my middle brother’s wife and they already have two kids.

Here’s the problem.

That is really nice! What a great tradition.

When it used to be just 3 niblings, I used to have full auntie/niblings day where I would basically take them out from sunrise to sunset.

Sometimes it was in the middle of the week, sometimes in the weekend depending on my work/social schedules.

From the start, I made my boundaries clear because I had read horror stories about babysitting.

I basically said that I will only offer that 1 day a week of auntie fun/babysitting and will only babysit otherwise if there was extreme circumstances.

For example when one of my SILs had their second baby, I was more than happy to have their toddler over for a four days sleepover until they were out of the hospital and settled at home.

With each added member to our days, it became my worst nightmare to handle that many kids alone.

Say what you want about me but that’s a lot of responsibility and a lot of kids and just one me.

That is smart, too many kids can be overwhelming.

So I started cutting the time and mixing and matching.

Still same day but for example, I take one of my brothers’ kids for something fun at breakfast.

Another brother’s kids to lunch and the last brother’s kids to dinner and I’d mix it up the next week.

No one had any problems with it.

Nothing wrong with her asking, nothing wrong with you saying no.

Now that my SIL is heavily pregnant, 31 weeks, with their 3rd kid, she brought up the thought of me maybe keeping her kids all day and bringing them to stuff with the other niblings.

She used to use that as a self care day for herself.

I turned her down and told her my reasons:

1) It would still be a lot of kids to handle if we merge, 5-6 and.

2) it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of my niblings.

She understood (no crazy, selfish SILs here) but I could feel her disappointment and that has me feeling guilty because I’m not a mom, I have no idea how hard it is for her.

My brother talked to me after that and asked if I would reconsider if he sends their usual babysitter with me to help out?

That is a nice offer, but it would still be a lot of work.

I told him I’d think about it but I don’t want to be unfair to the other kids, plus, I don’t know this person that he would be sending with me.

AITA?

Not at all, what you are doing for them is great and there is nothing wrong with setting reasonable limits.

Take a look at the comments below to get some other people’s perspectives.

Yup, this is a great idea.

Rotating may be the best option.

Here is a commenter recommending taking one set of kids per week.

That is a lot of little kids.

This person recommends leaving them with the babysitter after the special time.

This Aunt is really going above and beyond already.

It’s great that her family is understanding of her boundaries.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.