How awful was this parenting failure? Be honest

The situation was saved as you stayed put and your child had a lovely day.

But the memory of your daughter's devastated face is a natural consequence for you and you absolutely won't do this again.
One thing is to disappoint her if the plane is cancelled to a holiday of a lifetime (not at all your fault). Another is 'we're going home cos I wanna' which is what you did.

What a ridiculous story.

Go easy on yourself.
Your sister was very much at fault.
At 3, children can repeat things and do!
You were not unreasonable to be annoyed.
Your child will not remember this.
Be kind to yourself.

Good news is that your toddler will not have remembered this for more than about 30 seconds. Bad news is that we will all disappoint and cause unintended damage to our children in various different ways, to various different degrees, just as our parents did to us. It’s part of the glorious mess of being human.
Cut yourself some freaking slack, lady 💐 You are doing a hard thing, being a single mum, and you obviously care very much about your kid. Please extend a little grace to yourself, just as you would to a mate if they told you this story. ☕️ 🍰

Not a criticism but you sound like you're reactionary.
Sounds like you need to dig a little deep and resolve some life stuff.
Your kid is 100% fine!

Good grief.

What a lot of drama about something that didn’t happen.

Possibly this, but I also wondered whether the taboo/sensitive topic is actually something really traumatic which has had a major impact on OP?

Sometimes when we're going through something incredibly difficult it can kind of overload the nervous system and put people into a state very close to fight or flight almost all of the time. It's very difficult to live like that and can derail even the most minor everyday experience.

Whatever is going on in your life you can fix it ,as well as you can, and move on.

Good luck.

I am going to offer a slightly different perspective.

• you have taboo and sensitive topics that one can’t discuss. Even with your sister. It is not clear if the sister is aware or aware of how taboo this is
• you then had a tantrum when she did (even though she did stop) and said something extreme
• you have then had an equally extreme reaction to a non event- nothing happened- your toddler was confused/upset for a moment. Unless you are planning to go through life never upsetting your child this is part of growing up.

Now when I put all three together- the taboo subjects, the overreaction and the overreaction to the overreaction I wonder if you are by nature quite anxious and sensitive.
In the long run perhaps that rather than a momentary slip of the tongue will be more detrimental to your child. One of the hardest things to do as a parent is to regulate ourselves and recognise when we are bringing our own baggage to the table.

Why not promise to yourself that you’ll never throw threats like that around again? Then you’ve made it up to your toddler in a real way

it is upsetting for the toddler - i agree.
do you often behave like this?

Honestly OP, the fact that you are stressing over this non issue makes me really question your reaction to your sister. You seem highly sensitive and possibly dramatic about minor things. Get some perspective, you had a nice day out with your child and family. Nothing went wrong, all is good.

It seems.to me that you have an issue with holding on to things and letting them get the better of you - the family stuff, and now the toddler's upset.

You are a good mum.

You went ahead with the day.

Well done.

Your child is probably not going to remember any of this except a fun day.

Total non issue

Or OP is over reacting and making a mountain out of a molehill... She really needed to come to mumsnet for this?

This is literally a complete non event.

You must say no to your children sometimes???! Being disappointed won’t kill them. In fact it’s probably good for them to occasionally feel disappointed and learn how to deal with that. The world doesn’t revolve around them at three. Or any other age..
honestly what I take from your post is that possibly there are other parenting failures you are not aware of..! Don’t let your kids learn what disappointment is in their twenties.. they need to learn some things before then!!

That's not a parenting fail.

Don’t worry it was momentary disappointment, it’s important children get these disappointments for minor things like this so from time to time so that they build up emotional coping mechanisms or simply the expectation that they will sometimes be disappointed, to build up resilience for later.

You also got your sister to drop the topic, so it wasn’t a pointless exchange, you achieved your goal and also showed him that you need to stand up for yourself.

You're a good mum.

This is like a 1/10 bad thing. It was a momentary upset.

I hope you come to this with fresh eyes in the morning and feel better.

What's done is done. I bet you'd not do it again though? Please, you're human, we all make snap comments/choices that we can regret. No harm done, your child had a lovely day and that moment will be completely forgotten.

Absolutely non issue. Toddler got to stay. Problem sorted. They move on very fast and as someone else said, they can fall apart over not getting a biscuit 🍪 so yeah it's really an nothing from toddlers POV.

sister then she was sorry and she didn’t mean to mention the topic

But she did anyway. Hmm.

Toddler is 3 and will have forgotten about the sadness and confusion as soon as you got on with the day as planned.