To tell my DSIS she is taking the piss!?

[Whatevernext2]

Nc’d for this
I have 2 dc who are now 5.5 and 7.5. When I had my dc my dm had retired and offered to mind them when I went to work. Dm wouldn’t accept payment as such so I used to do things such as fill up her car, pay her grocery bill whenever I was with her, take her clothes shopping, take her away on spa weekends etc etc. So anyway this continued up until last year when my youngest started school and at the same time dh got a new job whereby he works from home so he can drop the dc and collect them (school is 2mins around the corner) and they are quiet happy staying quiet in the next room colouring etc until I get home at 4.30.

Now the MAIN issue...my dsis got married 2 years ago and said she would wait until she was ready to have children as she couldn’t afford it. My Dm then said well “I’m not minding dg’s any more so I will have yours now if you want. So dsis decided that would work and started trying, baby was born 3 months ago ( baby is a very demanding baby)...Now my dm has decided that she would like to work a part time job (her friend had opened a shop) and that she needs money and that on reflection she will be too tired to do childcare. Fine... she’s entitled to change her mind. Dsis is fuming and has now...WAIT for it!!...decided that as I benefited from years of free childcare that I should help pay half towards HER childcare costs when she goes back to work!! She announced it last night when she popped round, I laughed as I thought she was joking...turns out she wasn’t and insisted it was partly my fault because I told her dm was great and saved me loads of money by minding my two!!and that by saying this I had convinced her to go ahead and get pregnant in the first place.

If you have stayed with me this long...thank you!! And also just to note it’s not that they would suffer money wise, my dsis just loves her current lifestyle and doesn’t want to lose it!

Nothing to do with the OP, it’s hardly her fault her dm offered free childcare. Her dsis is crackers if she thinks she should pay for the childcare. Batshit.

Absolutely. But any sympathy I have here is for the dais who has been let down big time. Unless I've missed it, the implication is that dsus could afford childcare, but doesn't want to change her lifestyle. This doesn't exactly say how much of a lifestyle change it would be - it may be a case of them living very frugally for 5 years, we dont know.
I'm sure dais said that in a moment of 'That's not fair'. Because it isn't. OP could be a bit more sympathetic, given that she had all the advantages. Helping out during school hols, maybe?

Siblings treated unfairly is one of my biggest pet peeves, and I still think the sister is a bit bat shit.

There’s an entire generation gap between me and my siblings. My parents had me as teenagers and obviously didn’t have any money. When they had my siblings in their 30’s, they were much wealthier and so of course my siblings got things that I never had. Holidays, University, etc.

I don’t ask my siblings to fund half my holidays and enrol in university and send them the bill just because they benefitted from things my parents couldn’t provide me.

The sister’s beef should be with the mother, asking her sister to pay half her childcare bill is nuts. I’d laugh too.

I don't think posters have said op is toxic but that the family system is toxic.

Sadly, family scapegoats see very clearly when a family system is toxic - because they've been the butt of it their entire lives - whereas the rest of the family are entirely oblivious to it. Absolutely entirely. Largely because they've not been on the sharp end of it because the family-appointed scapegoat fully fills the tiresome quota (as far as the family is concerned - and family scapegoats often, maddeningly, conform to the family projection, fulfilling the prophecy) and the rest of the family are content because the scapegoat carries all the family ills so all is well - except for the scapegoat, where all is NOT well within the family.

So I do think it's as clear as day to scapegoats when a, any, family system is toxic. They see it a mile off.

Baffled by some of the posts on here. Yes, the DSis is upset, but she isn't scared teenager who has had an unplanned pregnancy, she is a grown adult woman, married, in a stable relationship for at least 2 years who deliberately tried and succeeded in getting pregnant. Dsis insisted it was partly my fault because I told her dm was great and saved me loads of money by minding my two!!and that by saying this I had convinced her to go ahead and get pregnant in the first place.

For every person who has a family member to help with childcare, there is someone else who doesn't have this option and DSis should've considered all eventualities before trying for a baby. Nobody has a baby just because someone else said it would be fine. Dsis needscto take responsibility for her own choices.

As @BengalGal points out, Things can change fast when you get old and no one should plan their family based on free labour from anyone, much less an aging parent. Anyone can die, get ill or have a change in finances and this is all much more likely with an elderly person.

And agree with @HazelBite says, The OP said that DM lost her husband 7 years ago, looking after the gc's was probably therapeutic for her. Since her bout of ill health (and the fact she's that little bit older) she probably feels unable to cope with a young child.

I find it totally bonkers that some posters are saying DM should provide free childcare for DSis regardless of the fact DM has said she doesn't want to. Why isn't DM's choice valid here? Also find crazy those who have suggested that OP shouldn't have accepted the offer of free childcare 7 years ago just in case DM wasn't able to provide the same for her sister. Why on earth not? And are those posters saying they would've turned down the offer in OP's shoes? Of course they wouldn't. OP shouldn't have to plan her life around "what ifs", you have to adapt as life changes.

To those saying the DSis is going to lose her house, this seems a leap from the original post that stated And also just to note it’s not that they would suffer money wise, my dsis just loves her current lifestyle and doesn’t want to lose it!

Not to hijack the thread, but as there are lots of valid points on this thread about the cost of childcare, I just want to mention another thread which is currently seeking opinions for a parliamentary debate about bringing in 15 hrs free childcare for 9 month olds. There are 455 responses on this thread about "DSis taking the piss", but only 12 responses so far here, so if anyone wants to add their thoughts to the parliamentary debate, please, please do so:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/going_back_to_work/3839359-MNHQ-here-are-you-returning-to-work-or-have-you-recently-returned-after-parental-leave-Tell-the-Petitions-Committee-about-your-experiences

How old is your mother op? From what I can see she could easily be in her fifties or sixties. Some folks are acting like she’s some form of infirm octogenarian.

The point remains. The sister told her mother she would delay ttc because they could not afford a baby. This is the critical point.

Yes some women gave Up work, and with either benefits or a partners salary, their bills were still paid. This is not the case for the sister.

Yes some women could afford a grand a month child care. Again this is not the case for the sister.

The mother said she’d care for the baby, so she didn’t have child care costs and could still work, to pay the bills. So not affording it wasn’t an issue.

Based on this promise she stupidly had a baby. The mother then changed her mind. Not because she suddenly became incapable or ill, or aged massively in the year or so since she made the promise. Because she no longer wishes to.

So the daughter is in a very difficult position, I’m struggling to believe so many women on here have no sympathy for her, like the op.

Yes she made a mistake in trusting her mothers word. But her mother has done her wrong. The consequences the sister may face are huge. As said, it could even result in her loosing her home.

Many couples can’t afford an extra grand a month child care, nor can one of them just quit their jobs and stay home and still have the bills paid.

Yes, it’s her mistake, she should never have had the child, and now she needs to sort it. And clearly asking the op to help out financially isn’t the solution, but still What an awful position to find yourself in.

The resentment from this one isn’t going away, depending on just how bad the consequences are for the sister. This is a family fall out for a long time, and in my view quite rightly, not a fall out between the sister and the op, but the sister and her mother.

Asking the op for money is simply the act of a desperate woman.

OP has helped, as and when it suited her. If doing her DGCs childcare doesn't suit, I can't see this cold and self absorbed OP stepping in.
And seeing how she totally supports her mothers decision to not help, on the flimsy excuses used, then I can't see her putting herself out when she is older.

Gosh, I don't often wade in but a number of plaster being very unfair to you.

Don't have children if you can't afford them and/or can't look after them. If your sister has had hers early based on an offer of childcare then it's totally shit that this has been rescinded. But not your, or even your mothers fault - she didn't know she was going to feel her age more, or get ill. It could have been worse than this, which might have made your sister feel less hard done by but ultimately her child is her responsibility.

I am one of three, fairly spread out. Grandchildren have been born in batches of ages. The elder ones benefitted from fit young grandparents, the next lot had time with the grandparents but lots more tv and soft play. The next round are still in the baby stage but I can't see grandparents being able to help solo for much more than a couple of hours. It's the same situation with my husbands family. People get older, and they get older quickly. It's life.

If the sister had posted,

I don’t know what to do. I got married two years ago and we desperately wanted a child. But we simply couldn’t afford it. We rely on both our wages to live, and don’t have a spare grand a month to pay for child care. Both of us just earn enough that we wouldn’t have much in the form of benefits.

We decided to sadly delay ttc till we could afford it. But my mother, who is sixty two, and has provided child care to my sister for the last seven years for her two, said last year, that she would look after my baby, as she no longer needed to look after my sisters. This meant I could continue to work and I didn’t need to pay child care.

Between her and my sister, they convinced me to have a baby, that it would be fine. I knew it was a risk, I know it was our decision, and what if something happened to my mother, but she’s only 62 and I stupidly took the risk.

Now my baby is three months old, my baby is hard, I suspect she has tongue tie and coelic, and my mum has simply changed her mind, says she wishes to work in her friends shop instead, and would be too tired the rest of the time. It’s not she physically can’t, she just doesn’t want to any more.

We don’t know what to do, we can’t give up work, we can’t even go part time due to the drop in wages, even if our jobs allowed it, and we simply don’t have the money to pay for child care. We think we have to sell our home and move some where much cheaper, but even that costs money we don’t have.

I stupidly asked my sister to pay half the child care, they can afford it, and she got several years of free child care, I’m so desperate, but she laughed in my face and called me a cheeky fucker. Her attitude is “ I’m alright Jack”. I know I shouldn’t have asked.

What would you do? I guess the only answer is for us to sell up, maybe we could borrow more against our home and use that to pay for childcare.

I never want to speak to my mother again. She knows the only way we could have our baby was if she cared for her, she knew we were going to delay and she talked us out of it, I trusted her completely. Now she’s said “ sorry, I just don’t fancy it”

I’m devastated to be in this position.

The responses would have been much more sympathetic and horror at what the mum has done.

This is so not just about the money for your ds op.

In my family I'm your ds.
Dm has and still goes over and above for older ds child. Has done since dc was born.

When mine were young my dm worked part time and had my dn every other weekend for dsis but mine hadn't slept over at hers once until two years ago
She semi retired down to two days a week and promised to help out here and there however it very rarely came about yet she would take a days leave in the holidays to help dsis but never for me.

Now they are older and although dm is supposed to do pick up after school one day a week it very rarely transpires.

Can't remember the last time she had them for tea or anything even though she will try and muscle in on the only weekend day me dh and dc are home together but she can't quite be arsed any other time

I have to sit and listen to updates on dn all the time and every meeting school thing I get a whatsapp about yet she wouldn't even know what mine are upto half the time.

The last two half terms she didn't have them at all at any point and I recently asked if she would be abled to help in the May half term as mil is away and I can only get one extra day off work and she can't even though she only works two days a week because it would mean a day her and my df do a food shop

Years of this sort of thing gradually build up and I'm guessing this has happened with your dsis.
It's not just about her constantly having your kids but it will be about her involvement in your life whereby your dsis doesn't get that from your dm.

On a really skint week just after Xmas I asked dm if I could borrow £30 to cover fuel and I didn't hear the end of it yet on the very same day and in front of me she told my dsis not to worry about the £200 she lent her for a few weeks as she didn't want her to go short

This is the sort of shit I sit and take in and then dm wonders why I segregate from them.

Whenever we go out on my day off together it's my fuel I pay the parking etc.
And yet last time we did it I also ended up footing the bill for the coffees and cake as dmum sat down to hold a table and didn't even offer.

Op feeling and being treated like the non essential sibling is tough and it seems to get worse with age. Please consider your dsis has probably had years of this

She isn’t handling it well at all but I can see why your sister would feel hurt (which is where I expect this is coming from)

Obviously your sister is wrong, however I can only imagine her shock and dismay, that having be assured she would be helped she will have to go out and find a childminder.

Obviously loads of people do this, but she didn't think she had to because of what you and your mum told her.

Of course the responsibility is totally hers to do this, as she chose to have a child.

But I think most pre children women haven't a clue what's involved with a baby.

Most women learn on the job.

The realities of minding a new baby, juggling it all is something she is trying to come to grips with.

The baby is also a bit fussy, which means additional adapting.

I think her upset, and lashing out, is borne out of massive frustration at thinking that at least she had childcare sorted.

I find it very hard to believe most people wouldn't be very upset at being suddenly put in a situation where the offer is now rescinded.

Of course your mother is getting older, and has every right to make the right decision for her.
Minding children as you get older is very hard and no barrel of laughs.

It is very very tiring and completely restricts the life and freedom of the minder.

Of all the poor behaviour from your sister, I would give her a pass on this occasion.

She's a new mum and a bit of compassion would really be the kindest way to go, if you can.

Being a new mother, contemplating returning to work, all the juggling involved, can be understandable very daunting.

Is part of it that ds baby is very demanding and it's that baby that DM can't handle the thought of?

I can really sympathise with your poor Dsis here, she's been left in an awful position and seems to not have had much compassion for how difficult things are going to be for her.
As pp have said, being a new mum is already going to have been a life-changing experience, combined with sleep deprivation, a baby with tongue-tie and colic, suddenly needing to budget for childcare she can't afford, and needing to find a provider at short notice with baby in tow - I can only imagine how awful and overwhelmed she most be feeling. Add in the massive disparity between what she and her sister have received I can see why she might be resentful, to say the least.
Of course circumstances change, and we all know deep down that life isn't fair and we can't expect the same outcomes and treatment in all circumstances, but we're also human and can't help feeling a pang of hurt or resentment when we realise others have been treated better or had things that we never will, especially when the disparity is passed onto out children.

The asking for half of her childcare paid for by OP, if done earnestly, is massively CF behaviour. But I can also well imagine it being either an offhand comment made out of frustration or anger, not really meant, but then she has dug her heels in when OP's reaction was to laugh in her face. It could also be a result of sheer desperation- I know OP has said that Dsis will not be left short, but Dsis herself said before TTC that she was not currently in a position where she could afford childcare (to the extent she fully intended to delay having children), and I would imagine it's a very small percentage of households who could afford to lose £1,000 per month unexpectedly.

All that said, however, I can also sympathise with the DM. I'm sure the offer was made with good intentions of following through, but since then she has had 1-2 years child-free to start going her own way, her finances would have been pinched once OP was no longer helping her out, and she has had a serious bout of illness just three months ago - one that left her needing physical care from OP. It's likely this has had an effect on her health and energy levels, and this combined with the sinking in realities of starting over with childcare (it's easy to forget or gloss over just how difficult the baby and toddler stages are when you're looking after school age children) may have made her re-evaluate her ability to look after a high-needs baby. In this case, better to be honest up front rather than make a commitment she isn't realistically able to fulfil?

So I don't think there is necessarily a right answer here. However, there does at the very least need to be acknowledgement of just how badly this will affect the Dsis, and that she's been left pretty seriously in the shit. I think whatever happens now it's unfortunately going to be difficult to avoid resentment sinking in.

I agree the way through this is to try to show empathy to the sister. At the end of the day platitudes mean fuck all, and won’t change the fact she’s in the shit and will feel hugely let down, but there needs to be a recognition of what the mother has done to her.

The mother needs to own the fact her daughter was going to delay ttc because they couldn’t afford the baby and she talked her into it based on the fact she’d look after the child, then changed her mind, leaving her daughter properly in the shit.

If she owns her own home, and has equity, she could potentially extend her mortgage and borrow another fifty grand, pay it back over 25 years, and then diligently and only use the money to pay for child care over the next few years.

So instead of a cost of a grand a month, she might be paying a couple of hundred., which appears to be doable for her if she can pay half.

I feel a bit sorry for your sister. What is her financial situation like? And when did your mum tell her she wouldn’t be looking after the baby?

Unless she’s normally selfish and not very nice she’s probably incredibly stressed with a demanding baby and now childcare and costs to find.

Whilst it’s nice your mum helped you out perhaps she should’ve thought being older when your sister had a baby that maybe having yours FT wouldn’t look very kind if she decided she couldn’t do it for your sister. No one should expect childcare but I suspect your sister feels quite hard, no matter how nice you are to her.

Do anyone of you saying the DM has to help, realise slavery was abolished!
If you take the view can I do X without help, the DM could have died or never been able to recover from illness, or become ill next month and not be able to help, these things need planning for, because they happen.

It seems pretty unanimous that, while of course you are not financially responsible for half your DSis's childcare, you don't seem to be truly very sympathetic towards the position she's been put in and should probably work on that. Calling her the 'dramatic one' even to us on this thread in response to the situation she's found herself in is pretty lacking in empathy in my view.

You don't have to be the go-between between your mother and sister and technically it is their issue. However, privately expressing sympathy to your sister and trying to work out how you can make it easier for her (while being very clear - without laughing in her face - you can't and won't bear half the cost) would probably go a long way to smoothing over your relationship. Assuming that's a priority for you.

She sounds pretty desperate and I do feel for her, despite agreeing that she should really have had a Plan B.

my dsis just loves her current lifestyle and doesn’t want to lose it!

This is sneering BTW. One example, to the poster who insisted there was no sneering.

Message is: dsis is a waste of space, a vacuous stupid self-indulgent person. This is an example of classic family scapegoating.

OP strikes me as the type who would also refuse to do childcare for her own DGC

How very rude!

Good post by @4OClockRock

Your dsis childcare isn't your responsibility, nor your mother's, but it's easy to see why dsis is annoyed and worried, especially when DM had made promises in order to persuade her to have DC earlier than planned.

All DC on both sides of our family received loads of family childcare. For ours, there's not even been as much as an hour babysitting and my eldest is 5yo. But we had ours later than the rest, by about 4 years, and things changed in that time. We were made promises too, but made decisions on what WE could do, not relying on others. Your dsis needs to do the same!

*Of course your mother is getting older, and has every right to make the right decision for her.
Minding children as you get older is very hard and no barrel of laughs.

It is very very tiring and completely restricts the life and freedom of the minder.*

So true!

DP (at 56) & I (61) had his DGD overight at 6 mths old. It took us days to recover. A day at the zoo with her 2 years later took us weeks to get over.

LakieLady

56 and 61 isn’t that old.
Mine were still at school at that age with 5 hours of ECAs after school each night and friend had one still in primary.

It feels it sometimes, @Oliversmumsarmy!

I developed arthritis at meopause, which made it worse.

I would say she is BU, but my DSIL gets free childcare from DMIL, so by your sisters reasoning I'm owed about 30 grand. Woohoo!