To stop looking after my SIL"s kids at family gatherings?

[Beachcomber]

SIL and BIL have 2 boys, 4yo and 6yo. When they are with family they seem to think that it is some sort of break for them and that naturally their kids will be looked after by.... someone. They don't seem to care who. It's been like this since they were born.

This often falls to my MIL Often DH, me and my young adult kids will do it in order to give MIL a break or let her get on with cooking a meal for 15 people.

I hate it. Not because I mind looking after the kids but because I feel like I'm enabling something that is wrong. The parents always make sure they are sitting at the other end of the table to their kids and then ignore them. My 18 yo DD had to pull a large piece of parma ham out of the 4yp"s mouth at one point as he was starting to choke on it.
I had to intercept both kids being handed a large bowl of soup that had literally just been taken off the boil.
And we spend the entire meal cutting up their food (otherwise they stuff huge bits in their mouths), reminding them to chew, stopping them from eating ridiculous amounts, etc, etc.

We also played a lot with them and took them out for walks, took the little one to the toilet, etc.

The older child is also quite violent towards his little brother. At one point I had to intervene as he had his brother in a headlock and was choking him. It was really bad. The little one was choking and coughing and obviously frightened. I pointed out to their mum what had happened and she ineffectively made noises about Santa taking presents back. Older child laughed in her face and retorted that Santa doesn't exist. Nothing was done to explain to the child how dangerous / unacceptable it is to choke someone.

We will be having another big family meal this week and I've had enough of participating in allowing SIL and BIL to neglect their turbulent and obviously troubled kids.

I don't want to do it anymore. Or certainly not without saying something. Obviously I wouldn't leave a child to choke to make a point. But I think at the very least we should say something. MIL will try to stop me though (she massively enables all this).

I know I will create tension and my PILs will have a go at me but at the next family meal I want to decline for my and my kids to be placed at the table near my nephews and point out that we looked after them all over Christmas so perhaps their parents should parent them.

I know it probably won't make any difference and DH doesn't want me to do it for that reason. AIBU for doing it anyway?

Have you actually read the thread?

No one wants to stop doing things for their neices and nephews. They want to stop being made to solely parent them at family events as they are difficult!

Agree with others though that you don't need to helicopter them at the table.
And DH needs to send Lo back to mum over things like the toilet.

Other than that I'd try and sneakily move the designated places before sitting down and then claim innocence

Yeah well we do that too of course because we are grown ups.
We always take a prepared dish and dessert and we (all 4 of us) cheerfully set and clear the table, stack the dishwasher, wash up, etc.

Somehow we manage to do these normal things whilst also chatting to a 6yo or taking a sharp knife out of a 4yo"s hand.

We also regularly host and do quite a lot of cooking for 15 ourselves. Which we generally quite enjoy and it has the added benefit of giving PIL a break from doing it.

how often do you see these family members? If not that often you could do the minimum and tell your DC that how much to intervene is up to them. if often would cut back!

Tough situation OP. I think it’s reasonable to get some load-sharing when at a family gathering. But it is beyond cheeky of them to just totally ignore their children. Some of DH’s extended family are like this, they arrive, and don’t speak to their kids again until they leave.

The trouble is, I can’t see this actually making any difference. It’ll just make you the bad guy. The parents will continue to ignore their kids whether they’re sat next to them or not, your MIL will end up being the one to step up when necessary, but you’ll look bad for having disrupted the status quo.

How often do you see them all together?

I’d not be inviting SiL / BiL over to mine either.

I'm getting CF vibes here 😂

Well if you don't want to do it, don't do it but honestly the things you list don't sound that bad to me and sound like the sort of thing anyone might do for a young relative. No need to make a scene - just stop.

Ask whoever does the table plan to seat the kids next to their parents.

I think you SIL (where is her partner in this? Is he not there) is probably pretty knackered and does appreciate the support family on these occasions. You’ve seen how challenging the eldest behaviour is, and how little respect he has for his mother. Imagine what’s happening at home. Maybe she needs more family support not less?

Yes I agree with you. It is part of family gatherings. The parents get a bit of a break and generally aunts, uncles, older cousins, grandparents, etc enjoy time with the little ones.

But this is more than that.

I can't imagine that there are very many people on this thread who wouldn't do something about one of their children trying to strangle the other.

Or the fairly constant and one way pinching, hitting, hair pulling, etc that goes on. I assume for attention.

It's a sad state of affairs. And much of it is enabled by the family.

yoy Need some place names. Get reusable ones or get a child the right age to decorate some printed names then put them where you want them.

If they behave like that in front of 16 people I dread to think how they treat those two young little ones. I felt very sad for the children reading this. Keep being kind to them and I would definitely keep an eye out for any further neglect from these two vile parents. The little 4 year old was scared and ignored, how very sad.

The only unreasonable thing about your post is the title. They are not just your SILs kids, Your BIL is equally guilty here.

Again lots of good points. Thank you. It is really helpful to hear from outsiders.

You get so used to a set up that you are around a lot and end up going along with stuff that just isn't OK.

Maybe we are too mother henish with nephews. I just can't imagine sitting next to a child who is stuffing big slices of bread into their mouth and not suggesting to them that they slow down / moving the bread basket away from them.

Half the problem is that the family eat late (cultural thing) and the kids are starving by the time they get to the table so they cram food in. It makes me nervous as I've been around a few choking incidents.

With regards to the comment about SIL being knackered. Yes, she probably is. And BIL is a lazy sexist man who thinks cleaning and parenting is women's work.

But she gets a lot of help and always has done. The kids spend the entire summer at grandparents" houses. They spend 3 weeks with each set of grandparents (so 6 weeks in total) and have done since they were tiny babies.

PIL have them for a week at every other school holiday.
They also regularly go and look after the kids at home and help to clean the house as it is chaotic and dirty.

We help less as we work full time / have brought our own kids up / disagree with the enabling / think it's not good for young kids to spend 6 weeks away from their parents. But will take the kids for a day or so to give MIL a break.

Older child spent 2 months with PIL when SIL was pregnant /had just had her 2nd child. Because she was tired.

He was only 2 yo himself. We assume that this is part of the reason why he is so nasty and violent towards his little brother.

Just say, at dinner, oh let's swap, you'll want to sit near your children. If they are playing with something they shouldn't, then let bil or SiL know,; don't intervene yourself.

The main problem is your inability to manage the communication directly with them, and it can be done without anger or resentment. Just plainly.

Also, a certain amount of all chipping in with kids is normal, so I wouldn't try to completely reverse it, you're hopefully aiming for better balance. Parents of young ones get very tired, and it's hard to remember that later on.

The dynamic sounds awful! I love looking after little nieces and nephews but none of our siblings would absolve themselves of responsibility for their own DC! We also have a policy of ‘handing over’ the kids to the next adult at big family events, so there are no vagaries around who has eyes on. It’s all too easy to assume ‘someone’ will step up, when actually everyone is assuming that someone isn’t them in the event of an emergency!

Yes. You are absolutely right.

This is one of the reasons that we do what we do. The children are neglected in some ways. But not in others. The parents do feed them, dress them, take them to school, etc.

Family members step in and do things for this reason though.

MIL potty trained both kids when she had them for the summer for example because the parents just kept putting them in nappies and it was starting to be an issue for school.

We feel incredibly sorry for them.

I do want to continue to be kind to them. But I also think SIL and BIL should be told to pull their socks up.

Yes!

This is one of the reasons that there is a bit of a tendency for us to helicopter. Because there is no organisation around who is actually watching the kids.

It's like no one wants to actually say anything as it highlights that the parents aren't paying any attention at all to them.

It's an accident waiting to happen.

Me and my brothers have this type of relationship which we jokingly call “communal parenting”. When we are at my parents in any combination, all adults look out for all kids. However they aren’t anywhere as unruly as your describe these children to be so it isn’t an issue at all, and whilst we’d all intervene if needed we tend to leave disciplining to the parents. And most importantly, it’s reciprocal!

In your situation I’d do as others have suggested and just call them out on it every time. Let them know when they need to intervene and then walk away.

Unfortunately you only get to decide certain things like I'm not doing this anymore and nor are my children. You don't get to decide what PIL do. In your shoes I would say to MIL I and the DC's are only coming to future events if we are seated away from nephews. You can't make nephews sitting next to parents a requirement. If you find it difficult to watch you PIL's being taken advantage of by SiL then DH could step in and speak to SIL about taking the piss or if his DM/DF ever vent to him about the situation whilst continuing to enable he can say to them he doesn't want to hear about it as they are enabling things. Everyone gets to determine their own boundaries, they don't get to determine other people's.

Same but different situation this year for us, DH and I decided our responsibility was to our own DC's needs so put them first. The car crash we knew we were protecting them from happened without us. DH did try to stop the possibility of the car crash from happening but it wasn't his decision to make. I'm just thankful we weren't involved and our DC know we put them first.

I do have real concerns about this.

The behaviour is escalating.

I was really shocked that his parents didn't take him away quietly to have a very serious talk about how dangerous and unacceptable the strangling incident was.

DH spoke to them and they said that it's none of his business but as it happens the older child is seeing a school therapist as he is also violent at school.

I don't know if that has been brought about by the school or by the parents.

I suppose it's good. But in my opinion it's the parents who need therapy. The child only needs therapy because of his parents behaviour.

You have two options - continue reluctantly helping care for the boys, or choose to actively do it in a way that works for you. The third option of you/your PIL, DH, speaking to SIL BIL and making them understand they need to be better parents, them suddenly stepping up and being better, isn't going to happen. Those situations where you sit back and wait for the parent to come and help - they won't come because they don't at home either when they're on their own with their boys.

I would try choosing to parent the boys at the next event. Agree a rota with your DH and DC, and PIL if possible, on the hour changing who is responsible for the boys. That way you are clearly calling out that the parents are not parenting. (They might protest - great! - but unlikely). It means you know you have several hours of relaxing knowing someone competent is looking after them. Finally it means the boys have a clear sense that someone is watching them consistently and they have boundaries.

You and your family can model what caring for a child should look like. Say it all out loud - oh we cant have you going down that dark corridor on your own,that's scary for you - It's definitely not OK to hit your brother like that, we need to stop you doing that because it's awful for him, and also once you're a bit older you would be in trouble with the police for doing that - It might shame the parents into thinking again about how they're bringing them up and they might actually take some of it home.

If not, at least the boys have had a few hours of being looked after properly and they have this as a reference point. They will probably enjoy this time as they will feel more secure and have boundaries.

It's all very sad and frustrating for you to see your nephews brought up in this way. Just think when they are 18 how would you like them to remember the family events and you, DH and DC.

This!

Or go after the meal?

I have multiple nieces and nephews and at Christmas or other family gatherings we all chip in to keep an eye on them, help them with things etc. we're all family so in my mind that's normal.

My nephews are often roughhousing and I certainly wouldn't call them turbulent or troubled 😂 if I saw one put another in a headlock I'd tell them to knock it off but it wouldn't be an irregularity or something I'd even mention to their parent.