AITJ for refusing to babysit my nephew for a week because my sister dicided to go on vacation?
i have an older sister. She has a husband and a 6 yearold son.To be hones, their life has always been a bit unstable.Her husband might quit his job just because he's tired of it,then spend months looking for a new one. They're constantly short on money sometimes thay have debts, and sometimes they borrow from our parents.
For me, on the other hand, everything is calm. I work in IT, have a decent salary, no kids, and live alone. Because of this, for the past three years I’ve often helped them out with my nephew. At first, it was manageable sitting with him for an evening or taking him for the weekend once a month. Then, somehow it gradually became almost an obligation for me.
Especially because the kid is a real handful. I get that kids can be noisy, but the problem here is specifically how he’s being raised. They hardly ever say no to him. If he breaks something, the usual reaction is well, he’s just a kid or you’re overreacting, it normal when kids broke something.
One time he was throwing toys around and smashed my monitor. Another time, he took my gamepad even though I told him right away not to touch it and broke the joystick. The worst part was with my work laptop. I stepped into the kitchen for just a couple of minutes, and he spilled juice on it and starting laughing. The repair cost a pretty penny. My sister said then that they couldn’t help out with money right now because they were going through a tough time.
After that, I started agreeing to babysit him less often. Especially since I had a girlfriend, because I wanted to spend more time with her
My sister recently wrote to say that they’d finally saved up enough for a week long vacation and were really looking forward to some time alone together. She asked me to take my nephew in for the whole week, since my vacation overlaps with theirs. And that’s when I really lost it.
I asked how it was that they had money for a vacation but never had money to pay for the things their son broke. And why my vacation was automatically considered free time for their child.
My sister immediately started crying. Her husband started saying that I was counting every penny and wasn’t acting like family at all. My parents are piling on the pressure now, too. But the most infuriating thing is that no one even asked if I actually wanted to spend my vacation this way.
And now i kind of get that she's having a hard time and she's really tired.But i feel like I've just been stuck in the role of a backupparent,and I'm trying to get out of it.
TL;DR: For years I looked my nephew for free, and no one ever compensated me for the trouble he caused. When my sister asked me to take him in for a whole week so they could go on vacation, I refused and now the whole familt thinks I'm selfish.