Saying no to childcare in the holidays

[Aprilmaymum]

I today put my foot down and said no to my DSIL asking me to look after her three DC for two days next week. I have DC of my own and I am a full time mum while my DH works long hours. Last week I looked after my DN’s for two days. I I get my DSIL works and I am always happy to help but this is turning into more than the odd day. Of course my DBIL
has spoke to my DH about this and how disappointed he is etc etc. I don’t want to fall out but I feel enough is enough. I plan my DC activities in the holidays and next week two have swimming and one a drama group. this gives me a chance to catch up on jobs. So when DSIL asked me again and for three days I said no. It took me a lot to say no but now I feel
like a pig in the middle.
anyone else who is a full time mum feel like they are being took advantage of.

You don’t ask family for help with childcare and vice versa? Friends too. Takes a village. I like having my nieces and nephews, it helps keeping my kids occupied. It would be cheeky to ask and just expect an automatic yes (and complain to the husband!)

Hardly the point but crack on, as I said I don’t give a shit about it, what really is irritating though and why I defended one poster is she was clearly very upset and was basically told to fuck off.

The posters who piled on, then and now failed to understand that what she wrote in response was directly related to how insulting she felt what the OP had written. She obviously was t saying the OP was though things but there are varying levels of comprehension on here.

Why am I even bothering at this point I must ask myself. Off I fuck.

I think they will try to get you to help out for other weeks. There’s still a few weeks of school summer holidays
Im more upset for you about the fact they think they can more or less force you to look after their children and get the in-laws involved. It makes the overall situation unpleasant

But feeling something doesn't make it true. If someone gets disproportionately upset at an innocent and commonly used phrase, and completely overreacts to the poor OP, I'm not sure that can be defended.

Some posters do need to get a bit of perspective and realise that mostly people are not going through life looking at ways to deliberately insult others.

OP, when they ask you next week to look after their dc, be prepared!
I think this is a good time to say that after their appalling behaviour, you think it best they make other arrangements. Bil in particular would have reallly annoyed me, in your position.

Careful now, this can be applied to everthing then. That poster didn’t directly attack the OP either if she had I wouldn’t have said a word.

I didn’t disagree with you though, however, my immediate thought was some arsehole had belittled or criticised the PP for her to respond like that, not that she views the OP like tha. The PP never came back so who knows how this upset her. I’m not some great defender either but the childish comments in response were pathetic.

In a general sense, not cheeky to ask family to help with childcare.

In this specific case it was cheeky as hell to ask OP to mind three children for long days when she already has three of her own, when she's already done it several times for them but the favour is never reciprocated, and when you're asking because you just couldn't be bothered to organise childcare over the summer holidays. It's not like this was an emergency or a quid pro quo. They just thought the nearest SAHM was there to be their free childcare. They're chleeky as.

You mean like lots of them picking fault with her use of the term full time mum?

Yeah, it's irritating. Particularly since she acknowledged the complaints ages back

Sil should have asked you before telling the kids that they were going to yours /seeing cousins

I'm happy to have dd cousins /friends over but on the days I went

Dd7 goes to club 2 days a week so I can sleep as I work nights

No way would I be having other kids if mine wasn't there

I have read all the OPs posts but no replies as the thread is so long.
DSIL should not assume that the OP can look after her DC on any day let alone certain days.
Telling her DC they would be seeing their cousins when it wasn’t arranged so that they then cried is all on her. It almost sounds like it’s been done deliberately for emotional manipulation.
Stick to your guns OP. Very occasional help would be nice when it wasn’t expected but it sounds like they wanted you to be their regular childcare without even asking.

edited as didn’t make sense!

You don’t ask family for help with childcare and vice versa? Friends too. Takes a village.

The situation here is a couple who appear to have used up all their annual leave on a month long term-time holiday, have no plan for summer childcare and are repeatedly asking OP (nobody else?) to have their three kids for long days and assumed that will be ok. This is despite them never having OP’s kids as well as meaning she can’t go anywhere in the car and she has booked her own kids into childcare anyway so she could get her own stuff done! When she isn’t bowing down and agreeing, SIL is getting her husband involved to ‘talk to’ his brother about it and then bitching about how much OP has upset her to her dad/FIL. I think this is pretty appalling.

A bit of give and take amongst friends and family is fine. When people start demanding a ‘village’ to help them out, they are just chancers.

The OP has left paid employment and has made the life choice to commit her time to raising her children full time.

An idiot could understand that. And yet here you all are in all your glory.

@Aprilmaymum I think it’s very important now that you say that it’s just too much for you to look after all 6 together and so while you have plans for this week, you really can’t offer childcare anymore at all (and yes, you never offered, they asked but that’s a different issue!).

remove yourself from the options, 6 kids is far too many for you. Well done if someone else can cope, you have tried and can’t. They need to find someone else.

Even when they’re at school? I’m sorry I couldn’t resist 😂

Why's the dbil texting your husband? Hasn't he got the balls to ask you directly to do his job for him. CF.

I'm not a SAHM and have a nursery age child so no skin in the game, but surely if you are able to be a SAHM to school age kids, you would use the time when they're at school to get jobs done, organise stuff and recharge your batteries so that family life runs more smoothly and you can fit more in the rest of the time.

Yes, families with working parents manage without this but I often find myself saying to my kids "sorry, Mummy's too tired to play" or not getting round to organising stuff or not wanting to engage with them constantly because I'm tired out. If I had the luxury of time to myself during the day, I'd use it to be a less stressed and more organised parent to my own children the rest of the time, not to do unpaid childcare for someone else.

@Aprilmaymum what is your SIL/BIL doing with their children the rest of the days of the week that she hasn’t asked you to have them for?

The post you are referring to did attack the OP and was unbelievably rude which is why it was deleted for breaking guidelines.

As many have said, if the term upsets someone to the extent they had to post in the way she did, her feelings of upset are a reflection on her dissatisfaction with her own life and nothing to do with the OP (who apologised immediately for using the wrong terminology and meant no offence).

The person who made the post is long gone. Your repeated comments about posting your last one…then reappearing to continue defending the indefensible are quite entertaining so keep going…!

I'd really like to know how the OPs family challenge gets resolved and hope the derailers haven't put her off coming back to update us on what happens, and how she feels about it. It sounds like you're level-headed and able to rise above the drama, OP, so I hope you're OK and feeling good about your totally justified position.

I think you just have to sit back and laugh at her attempts for free childcare.

1. You said no, so she cried to her husband.
2. You said no again so she involved MIL.
3. You continued to say no, so now she's saying how upset her kids are...

(The third one may be true as she may have said you were going to do loads of expensive activities).

There are lots of holiday clubs - some are free. Her lack of planning is not your fault or your problem. In these scenarios you will always be painted as the bad guy...even if you gave in now. Just go with being the bad guy and enjoy your summer with your kids.

Glad to be of service m’dear - but again the pp wasn’t actually saying the OP was those things but you can keep trying to convince me

What? The OP called herself a full time mum and upset a poster and others who pointed out there is no such thing as a full time mum as there are no part time mums. One particular poster was upset to the point she asked the OP if she’d like to be called lazy and whatever else she said as using the term full time mum was that insulting. She was told to use SAHM - that’s what the extreme frothing is about. Yes, under no circumstances (unless absolute emergency) would I have someone else offspring dumped on my doorstep because of their feckless parents refusal/inability to plan, agreed!

Yeah I know, it was said in jest 🙃

I wouldn't ask a parent who already has 3 dc, to mind an extra 3 dc for a full day, except as a one off or in some dire emergency, no.
As parents who WOTH, we made sure we had childcare in place for the days we worked.
Favours from family and friends were for an odd night out, or a funeral or hospital appointment when it would be really difficult to take the dc, not regular childcare for work (presumably 9 hours or so? x 3 days just in the one week, plus all the other weeks to come).

I wouldn’t do any more childcare ever, on principle. They’ve been bitching behind your back, trying to get your DH to override your decision (WTF?) and trying emotional blackmail.

Now they’ve done all that, you cannot possibly back down.