To want cut my brother and his family out of our lives

[goingeversoslowlymad]

This is going to be fairly long to avoid drop feeding so appolgies in advance.

Over the weekend I had my nephew over to play. He is 7, the same age as my eldest DC. He is an only child and whilst he can be absolutely lovely, he hates not having all the attention for himself at times and my DC's always have to do what he wants. Saturday appeared to be one of those days. He was very boisterous and was acting silly, swearing and being aggresive towards my two DC's to get their attention. My DC's were trying to play nicely on the trampoline (which they have just gotten) and were trying in vain to get him to join in, he very obviously wasn't in the mood for this.

After the 5th time of being called by my DC's, I explained to DN that his behaviour wasn't acceptable and he should apologise as we don't swear and hit in this house. I did not raise my voice and talked to him in a calm, measured tone. My mum was there and commented that she didn't know how I didn't lose my temper with him. However DN went mental and started shouting at me that I can't tell him what to do and that I'm a stupid cow with a stupid funny face (I have a slight facial paralysis). I was really shocked and upset and calmly told him this and that I was going inside to calm down as I was angry.

Everything calmed down and my DN left in what I thought was good spirits. Later that evening I received a phone call from my brother shouting and swearing at me saying how dare I discipline his son and that I humiliated him in front of everyone. His son is heartbroken and crying his eyes out because I was nasty and shouted and screamed at him! WTAF?! He then said that he was putting DN on the phone so I could apologise to him. At that I put the phone down. He has been ringing back and leaving nasty texts since then.

My mum has now got involved and has told me to apologise just to keep the peace as she hates conflict, even though she concedes that I didn't do anything wrong and handled things better than she would have. My brother and SIL are very bullying and domineering and this time I have decided to dig my heels in as I am sick of their behaviour which is obviously rubbing off on their son. My mum is now in the sulks with me. What should I do?

I think the laughing at/mocking/poking fun at your paralysis is beyond disgusting. I'd cut my own brother out for that alone. There's nothing funny about it. He's vile.

yanbu

I think I will just back off for a while to be honest. I don't think I'll be sending an email either upon reflection.

Without sounding like a boastful mother, my children are lovely and mostly very well behaved. This is something that me and DH have really worked hard on, we both absolutely detest bad manners and have tried our hardest to bring up well rounded children. My sil always comments that we're too strict! I would hate for our hard work to be undone by them witnessing DN's behaviour and thinking it's acceptable. We have already noticed that they are a bit cheeky and push boundaries a bit after they have been with him.

expat My brother knows how upset I get when people mock my paralysis as he knows I was badly bullied over it when I was younger. I would have expected him to be more understanding and sensitive over that, but seemingly not!

You won't be able to reason with them - because they have already proven themselves unreasonable.

YANBU to cut contact.

I think cutting out for ever is a bit extreme and possibly unecessary. But you can refuse to take abusive calls and you can state your position and leave it at that. I think I would do that because sometimes people do need to be told how their behaviour has affected you.

my dh has had to apologise to my sil many times because my MIL has asked him to even though it has been sil's fault and he does it to keep the peace and to pacify his mother. I don't think yabu but I can see why your mother just wants to keep the peace as it is miserable

I have also been on the receiving end of sil screaming at me down the phone too, so know how upsetting it is. I just have as little to do with her as possible now without making a scene and cutting her out

she said I was weirdo and everyone who knew me thought I was :o!

he's not swearing because he is an only child.

Clearly your DB and his wife are not great at parenting him. I imagine they would be the same with 2 or 3 kids.

My only worry about cutting contact would be that a 7 year old would grow up thinking he was the reason his whole family didn't see their auntie or cousins anymore.

You can stop having contact without 'cutting' it iyswim.
You don't need any dramatic gestures which will forever put you in the wrong (specially as sil is passive agressive).
I wouldn't be having DN to stay and you don't have to socialise with your brother. It's not the law.
You know they are going to take every opportunity to make this your fault so don't give them the satisfaction.
Your mum is so use to placating them she automatically expects you to make it right.
Well done for not backing down.

I think you can give them a wide berth without cutting them out entirely which in my opinion would be a completely over the top reaction. If your mum really wants to keep the peace she would do better to put your brother in the picture about what really happened. In my experience there are few things that cause worse conflict than other people's child rearing techniques - especially when they are so at odds with your own. We once nearly fell out with very good friends after a holiday together because their daughter was such a brat. As others have said your dn's behaviour is easily explained by the behaviour of his parents. By the same token think twice about cutting him out of your life entirely because what message is that sending to your own children?

Stand your ground, you did the right thing to calmly challenge his behaviour.

If you give in once and apologise for disciplining your nephew for his rude and unacceptable behaviour you will end up having to apologise again and again everytime their pfb son does it.

He is a child and should be taught to respect you as his Aunt, if they don't want to bother don't have them or him in your house and certainly don't answer their abusive phonecalls or texts (keep the texts though).

Your mum obviously doesn't want to be stuck in the middle of it all, but she is also part of the problem as she is not telling your brother/her son what is right and wrong either and not sticking up for you.

If you see them at family gatherings, be polite and calm and always seek to have other people around you when you communicate so it can't be a 'he said/she said' situation. Be the adult in the whole situation, if your brother kicks off at you he will only show himself up.

What MrsdeVere said. But laughing at your impairment is despicable. Reason enough, IMO, for getting shot of them without the dramatic gesture.

Exactly MrsD. We don't all need to have a RL version of Flouncers Corner. We can just do it quietly and by stealth. Far less stressful.

Tell them all to get fucked.

My brother was always quite a bully and we had a row by email about 2 years ago as I felt he was being unnecessarily hard on my teenage son for a trivial matter. Anyhow, it got a bit heated (I rarely ever get confrontational) and I told him he was pompous. I waited for the mushroom cloud and it never arrived and funnily enough, we've got on a lot better since then. I had always been frightened to stand up to him, my parents liked me to keep the peace. I think he has more respect for me now he knows he can't get away with saying anything he likes.

No I'm not going to cut all contact as believe it or not I am quite fond of DN, he is actually quite a loving little boy with a real sense of humour at times, he is also my godson. What I'm meaning is I think I'll withdraw from DB and sil for a while, I'll still have plenty of opportunity to see him at my mum's. I think my initial reaction to cut them out was driven by hurt and anger and as many people have pointed out, not very practical or fair on DN.

To be fair to my mum she has said something to DB about what happened and he knows DN was lying but sil will never allow him to apologise. My mum has also pointed out how angry she is that DB thought it OK to laugh at my disability. Funnily enough the only time I ever saw DN being told off was when he told us all that his mummy was deaf and wears a hearing aid (she is hugely sensitive about this and we were not aware of her hearing problems until then.).

goingeversoslowlymad I would then use that as a way of highlighting to your sil how hurtful and mean it was of your dn to say the things he did. She probably is the "it's different because it's ME" type, but you can try the empathy route.