"You have to be very good so Mummy and Daddy don't split up"

[intothenever]

This is what my sister told my 6 year old niece when explaining why some mummies and daddies no longer live together! She felt it was a good opportunity to point out that naughty children can put an intolerable strain on a marriage so dn needs to be good. I am horrified, this is wrong, isn't it?

Yeah, I think the biggest immediate problem is not that the child will internalise it and worry, but that she will repeat it to her friends and cause a lot of upset.

yeah, but you know that her dd-blaming is wrong, so you are cleverer than your daft sister.

I had a childhood friend who was very obviously intellectual. Went up to Cambridge a year early. BUT he was such a clueless idiot, he went missing on the journey... turned out, he'd looked at the train departure boards, and somehow believed that there was one train going to all these different places. Got on completely the wrong one!

He got a PhD in a physics though. Have lost touch, but presumably he could tell you quite a lot about string theory or the Cern super-collider -but he couldn't cope with catching a train.

YANBU but it's sadly not entirely inaccurate in some cases :(

It is an awful thing to say to a child. Like making them responsible for the parents' relationship.

I would pull her up on it.

it's a vile and cruel thing to say to a child. please tell your sister this.

Wow. It's not very often I feel the urge to hunt down someone I've never met and stamp repeatedly on her head until she stops moving or making any noise, but...yep, today is one of those days alright.

OP, if you feel you and your mum can't say anything/won't be heard, could you send her a link to this thread?

Jesus. That's bordering on emotionally abusive. Hell, it IS emotionally abusive, if the child takes it to heart, which she may well.

That's dreadful:( so even a parental argument could leave the child worrying its their fault.

When do you next see your dsis? Could your dm have misheard? Or is your dsis having marriage trouble and blaming it on her dd?

I would have to say something, as its very damaging to a child and if she babysits your dc might think " ooh, mum and dad were really upset tonight ( even if it was just nothing and actually to do with something unconnected to the child and not a row iyswim) and worry you would split up.

I don't like your sister, She can't be that bright/intelligent at all.

So, so, SO wrong. Just. Wrong.

Sheesh - she may have a brain the size of Saturn but wrong, wrong, wrong.

ugh, this is just horrible. I just don't understand how anyone can think that's an ok thing to say to a child? Are you going to say anything to her? Does she often say things that make you go

Sorry O.P. I Know it's your sister but what an insensitive thing to say. A BREAK UP IS NEVER EVER EVER a child's fault. xxx

That is indefensibly cruel. Shocking.

The only possible explanation I can think of is that she thought it was kind of like a 'the ice cream van only plays a tune when they have run out of ice cream' kinds of things to say to a child, and somewhere in her oddly constructed mind she thinks it's a joke/sneaky way of making her daughter behave. Unfortunately, it's a horrible, thoughtless and crashingly insensitive thing to say to a child, especially one who is at an age where they literally believe everything their parents tell them. I think you should talk to her about it, although if you find it hard to broach the subject then perhaps come at it from the perspective that you assume she must have been 'joking' but does she realise how these things take hold?