Hi, this may be a long one so apologies in advance. I have 3 younger sisters, we all have children. One of my sisters has a little girl (4) who we believe has severe sensory issues and is going through the rigmarole of getting a diagnosis, my sister is a lone parent, DN’s dad isn’t in the picture, our mom was a huge help before she passed away at the beginning of this year so now her only support is from us, her sisters and occasionally our dad. DN is extremely hard work - I say this in the nicest way I can. She is none verbal, can be aggressive when upset/frustrated, she doesn’t sleep, she is usually awake till 5am, she will scream the most high pitched scream when her moms leaves and this will carry on for hours, she doesn’t sit to eat any food and will only eat walking around meaning lots of food is usually trod into carpet/furniture, she is petrified of animals (dad has a dog so she hates staying with him), she won’t sleep alone so has to sleep in the bed with the adult in charge (won’t sleep with children either) and of course as she doesn’t go to sleep until 5am you are also awake with her, usually the time spent before her going to sleep she is either running back and forth around a room, making loud noises or crying/screaming loudly so the whole house is usually awake. I’m just painting a picture of her here so that you can understand why it’s a challenge to look after her, not to speak bad of her, we all think the world of her and are a very close family. My sister tends to ask for childcare a lot, she’s a little bit of a party animal, when mom was here it was every weekend, DN and mom were very close and mom knew exactly how to handle her, probably better than my sister does. Usually she will ask our sister who lives round the corner from her, however she has an 18mo and is currently due with baby no2 and has started to say no to childcare, she has never had DN overnight because she can’t cope but has now said no to daytime care too, which is understandable. My other sister has 3 children and works full time but is often happy to have her unless busy or at work, I live an hour away from my family so I am usually last resort. I’m on maternity leave until December, I have DD7 and DS who is 8 weeks, my sister has asked us if one of us could have her daughter for a week while she goes away on a girls holiday. As I’m not at work, have the older child and baby instead of baby and toddler I’m probably going to be the one who is expected to have DN. My sister can become really upset when she can’t get childcare, she will straight away pull the ‘nobody wants to watch my child because you don’t like her’ card, which is obviously not true, she will say she needs a break she is alone which I totally get. The 3 of us all have partners and support from in-laws with childcare and I totally get where she’s coming from, but what do you do in this situation? I want her to have a life and understand that she has it tough but that week would be extremely hard work.
AIBU - it’s literally a week just have the child
AINBU - it’s too much, say no