2 years ago we visited my brother in the spring, he lives a 4 hour drive away from me and I was around 7 months pregnant
Things were a bit odd while we were there, I’ll try and give a run down
- He had a long, drawn out and pointless ‘debate’ with me about my NC status with our father, I explained that Father had raised his fist to me and shouted at me for the last time and Brothers defence of this was ‘well he never actually hit us so that’s okay’ I explained that when men shout at me I think they’re going to hit me and he said ‘you can’t say that, you can say you think they might hit you but you’re bringing it upon yourself because you are expecting it’
There was another conversation about sexual harassment at work where he basically said if the woman has given a firm no to being harassed then she should be disciplined for involving management as its embarrassing for the Male.
Anyway.
He has two dogs, one is a large pointer who doesn’t like children, so much that the dog growled at the children when they walked into rooms and snapped at both the boys (then 4 and 6)
When she snapped at Ds2 (4) we were all sitting on a couch, DB was nearest the door and the dog, DH, DS1 and I were further away on a different couch.
Ds2 looked really shocked when the dog snapped at him and looked at me. DB said (remember that Ds2 is 4 years old) that if he (Ds2) didn’t like the dog, he could just leave and pointed to the front door. So Ds2 is in a strange house, has just had a dog snap st him while he walks past it and now has his uncle shouting and screaming at him.
At this point I stood up, pulled Ds2 towards Me and held him, he was literally shaking.
DB told me I was ‘pandering to him’ and ‘this is just what he wants, attention’ And when I told him to stop he started shouting ‘what do you want me to do Ds2? Have the dog put down? Is that what you want? You want the dog dead? So I basically told him to leave us alone repeatedly until he left the room.
He came back in and again started shouting at us but again (whilst cradling ds2) I just told him repeatedly to leave us alone.
He did apologise an hour later, but as you can imagine, Ds2 has compartmentalised all the fear and shame he felt, into a fear of that particular dog.
Now my brother is going away for 2 weeks in the summer and my mum who lives abroad has arranged to spend 2 weeks at his house with me and the kids.
I did tell her that you wasn’t sure Ds2 would be okay with that but I would ask.
He is still absolutely not okay with it and so I said to mum that I would drive our caravan up there, stay for a long weekend, then drive back with the boys (I have to work) and come up for another long weekend. Apparently this isn’t good enough and she refuses to be there if we aren’t there for the entire two weeks then she will be on her own and that’s not good enough.
Then she said she would have the boys herself and I could come and work and the boys would have to get used to the dog.
AIBU to not send them? They would be really scared and it just doesn’t feel right to me.
I feel I’ve done my best in saying I’ll take the caravan and we will stay for half the time, especially considering all the driving but nothing seems good enough and she (and my brother) are now angry with me