not to help BIL with the kids while DSis goes away for a few days?

Oh and after going and staying, doing diddly squat but playing and having fun with the children (to appease sis) not lifting a finger, id then say to the husband on the last day

Well you better tidy up as your wife will be furious with you if the house is a mess, it never is when you get back from cycle camp. You don't want her thinking you're totally incompetent and a loser

I wouldn't lift a finger.

He needs to pull his weight ... and that includes taking care of his own children and home when his wife is doing what he does regularly: taking time for himself with friends. And if she comes home to find the house a tip, she should tell him firmly she has never done that to him, and she won't be cleaning it.

Is it the first time she's been away since having the fourth DC? If so, I can imagine she's a bit worried - hopefully needlessly so.

Unless there is genuine need to help, eg childcare DSis usually does that DBil can't cover, I would be inclined to say no, or maybe limit it to eg taking the kids out for one activity or similar. Don't get involved in coming over and helping for unspecified periods - you really shouldn't have to pitch in with stuff like housework.

If the main worry is a messy house on return, that's really not the end of the world, and I think that's for the couple to work out between them.

Do you know what I would straight up ask him why it was okay for him to go away on cycling trips and your sister has no help, but when she goes away he needs a housemaid and a baby sitter?

Why can’t he look after the children and clean the house like she does?

It won’t make you popular (MIL asked SILs husband the same thing, and now she is the devil), but it might embarrass him enough to realise that he’s being a massive twat.

I have four children under age six. My husband doesn’t work away but does work long hours so I am largely on my own with them. I’m confident if he needed to go away I would be able to handle things on my own.

If I did need to go away and leave my husband in charge I would be feeling anxious. He’s a very hands on dad and I’m confident he would cope so I would try hard to let go of my anxiety. I would try to put some effort into making sure he knew what he needed to do so he didn’t drop critical balls that are normally my responsibility. Same as I would hand over properly to a colleague at work who was covering for me.

As to whether you should offer to help I think that depends on:

-Is he taking time off work while your sister is away?
-How involved is he usually? If he is pretty hands on then he will probably be able to muddle through. If he’s never changed a nappy then it’s a very different situation.
-Are any of the children at school/nursery? Or are they all going to be home 24/7?
-If so is it possible for him to handle the logistics solo? I assume so if your sister manages but if he can’t drive or something then offering to help would be invaluable.
-How much do you normally see your nieces/nephews? Especially when your sister is on her own with them?
-How long is she going for? If it’s two nights that’s quite different from two weeks.

If you were going to offer to help at all I would probably suggest offering to take some of them to the park or similar on the day your sister is coming back so that he can make sure house is clean for her arrival and he can have a short mental break from being “on” all the time before she comes home. The kids will have had a chance to burn off some energy and be able to welcome your sister home to a clean tidy house with children who aren’t bouncing off the walls!

Wow!

If he can't cope then he needs to be the one seeking help. Maybe ask his Dad or brother?

What she’s asking is, ‘Come and live in my house for a week while I’m not there to cook and clean for five people including a grown adult man’. No chance in hell would I facilitate that nonsense.

He needs to learn how to look after his four children on his own. It'll be a good learning and bonding experience for him.

He needs to learn by PLANNING. Don’t make him a list. If he can’t even manage to come up with a list of things to do, he’s absolutely useless.

Say you will be available in an emergency n he can call you..then you tell him if he does well she manages thats not an emergency, unless it is one

I’d reply, ‘LOL, no, don’t be daft. He’s a grown man. You manage perfectly well when he goes away. What on earth makes you think he can’t?’

I think it’s insulting to men to treat them like they’re inept idiots. Most of them manage to hold down reasonably responsible jobs. Looking after their own children should not pose any difficulty beyond their mother’s sole parenting experiences.

I wouldn't enable him to be a shitty partner and parent by being her backup nanny and maid. If she doesn't like how her husband doesn't carry his weight as a parent and in the household, that's for her to do something about, not use your time and work to prop him. Fuck that.

How are supposed to do this, take a break from your life to serve her husband for the time she's gone? She wants to use you as a servant.

Her request is way out of line and really weird.

Perfect!

My DD has got 4 kids and her DH probably does more than she does in terms of childcare and housework as she's doing a degree. I bet he barely lifts a finger to help her if she's that worried.

Then she is enabling her DH being a lazy arse and not parenting the 4 kids he and she chose to gave. I’d decline.

How about we stop feeling sorry for women who are married to these absolute drips and tell them to raise their standards.

How about we normalise really thinking about who we have children with before we have children with them.

Yes you could say that the OP’s sister may not have known how incompetent her husband was until the children came along but it sure as hell didn’t magically start one day after child number 4. Why continue to reproduce multiple children with a grown man child who can’t even look after himself or the house he lives in let alone the multiple children he helped create.

The more us as women just sit around and feel sorry for other women instead of giving them some honest home truths and encouraging them to want more for themselves the more women will end up staying in shitty situations like this.

Pathetic - When my youngest was 11 months, and the other 3 were 2, 5 & 6 I went away with some friends and my husband stayed at home with the kids. It didn't even cross his (or my) mind to ask anyone to come and help him 🙄

What an utter looser he must be.
I would speak with him directly and ask why sister is fine to have kids alone, but he's not. He can't parent his own kids?!

If BiL says he’ll find it too much, maybe he should reconsider all those cycling holidays if he thinks the workload is too much for one person. Otherwise, if she can do it, so can he. I’d say no on principle and tell her why.

I wouldn't do this. Wouldn't put it past him to manufacture emergencies.

I honestly don't know. I assume they were raised in a 'traditional' home where they watched their mother do everything and, if their father peeled the potatoes every once in a while for dinner, he was revered as a marvellous helper. Or perhaps their parents just didn't give a toss, or simply failed to teach independence.

It's usually not obvious at the start that they are so completely useless (or will become so completely useless)...it can be a bit of a boiling frog situation. Behaving that way is also a way of trapping the woman in an unhappy relationship - if it's not safe to leave the kids with them, she's trapped at home, at least until they kids are old enough to go to school, by which time, she may have lost her confidence, old work network etc. It often goes hand in hand with the woman having little or no financial resources (I'm not saying this is the OP's sister's case), so she can't go to work, because she can't pay for childcare. So she really is completely fucked at that point, with no hope of escape until the kids are older.

she is sister not SiL

I'd say I was busy but I was sure that BIL would cope fine.

In an ideal world you'd need no excuse and could say 'sis, you need to relax and trust Steve to look after kids that he chose to have' but I can see that some sisters (mine included) would have taken that as a criticism.

No. Don’t do it.