Sister angry I “yanked” my nephew’s arm and told him off

[Mmemm]

So I live with my parents (saving up for flat in London). My sister often visits with her child and husband.

We have a gorgeous 12 yo Golden Retriever who is enjoying his golden years sunbathing on the sofa. Anyway, I was in the living room on my phone when I saw my little toddler nephew go up to my dog on the sofa and hit him on the head with a coaster. Obviously it’s not heavy but I reacted as I am protective of my elderly dog, poor boy was dozing. I ran up to my nephew and held him by arm and said “we do not throw things at ‘Lucky’, how would you like it if I hit you in the face? That was very mean of you”. I took the coaster away from him and said if he can’t use it nicely then he can’t have it. Not a big deal. Pretty normal way to deal with it in my view. I may have been a little cross.

But sister is now demanding an apology. BIL was sat sort of to the side reading a magazine and snitched. Didn’t say anything at the time. Errr how how about you parent your child mate.

But apparently I was very overboard. I don’t think I was. I refuse to apologise on principal. Dog took it in his stride but you can’t be allowing shit
like that to happen.

In my mind sister can do one but parents have literally begged me as apparently she won’t visit whilst I am home 😂

We don't know how the family works.
OP has admitted she is considered the black sheep, she was hungover too, already annoyed with BIL.
I can see how this played out.
Dsis is probably annoyed that she moved back and upset the apple cart, now this.
I am the black sheep in mine, no judgement. When DSis had her DD 23 years ago. I gave her lots of annoying parenting advice 🙄 until I became a parent, Dsis is much nicer than me, I'd have said fuck off 23 year ago.

he was a 2 year old. Stop trying to say he wasn’t

Whether or not the OP handled the situation appropriately, the lazy arse BIL was the parent on duty and he should have taken over. Even if it had already happened and he was genuinely distracted, he should have said something to OP if he was unhappy about how she dealt with it, instead of doing a Pontius Pilate, then running to his wife to tell tales. What a gem of a dad. And husband.

Quite!

I have SIX nieces and nephews all close in age by two older sisters. See them all the time.

when they were little I never once had to "step in". Their parents were on it, capabale , alert and responsible.

if I did, and got the tone wrong or something, it would have been "that's a bit harsh, next time better this way. Suppose you don't know cause you're not a parent" And that's that.

The sister is over reacting. Massively.

I don't know. We left the EU on a narrower margin in a equally flawed poll where there was no understanding of the details of what we were voting for! 🤷‍♀️

Well totally agree with you on that one!

Yeah fair. All of that is ridiculous. I've actually found this thread really interesting because it's not black and white these sorts of things, but hate people's tendency to go to the extreme. Anyway, I am going to try and extract myself 😂 not how I intended to spend my Saturday morning haha.

True! 100%

Interestingly you think you need to protect your dog, but not your nephew. You doi sound very angry and bitter and passive aggressive and what you said was very OTT.

True.

Christ and as usual people have gone wayyy OTT on this one.

Let’s be honest here, you don’t teach a child not to hit animals by doing the whole “we must be kind,” speech, you do it often by force because the child is hitting the animal at the time.

There’s potentially only one chance to get this right. The child was lucky not to have been bitten in this instance, and if they had been the same posters calling the OP a child abuser would be calling her irresponsible for having a dog in the first place and demanding it be put down. Would be defending the sister and saying that she would be right to never set foot in the house until the dog was dead.

It’s like crossing a busy road. If a child tries to run out in the road do you say gently “no no little darling, we mustn’t run out in the road,” or do you, in fact, grab the child firmly from stopping it from running out. It’s the same with the dog.

Being firmly grabbed and told no isn’t going to scar a child for life. A dog waking up and snapping because it’s been hit over the head might well however.

That wasn't my point. I was imagining what the sister and BIL might be like as primary school parents. "Oh I'm sure he didn't mean it. He's just spirited!"

And yet all those people are in the 43% that you started off by berating the OP for not listening to over the majority that agreed with her.

It’s literally AIBU by the op.

I think BiL is the one who should apologise.

He wasn’t paying attention to his son and left OP to deal with it. When he realised he should have been the one to intervene he covered his arse with OP’s sister and left OP to take the blame for his version of what happened, when in reality she potentially prevented the child from being bitten. It’s true what they say on MN - no good deed goes unpunished.

If SiL is refusing to visit while OP is there, that’s her business. If l were OP I’d move out rather than be made to apologise for the actions of a lazy arsed dad who couldn’t be bothered to supervise his young son with a dog in the room.

Gentle parents are out in force. I don't see an issue with what you said, and I took would have held his arm or taken the coaster. I wish more parents parented their kid's, if you work in a school you'll understand the type of behaviour and lack of boundaries the new generation of children have.

If he didn't like the what you said, maybe he could have been watching his son, and intervened before he smacked the dog in the face. Not all dogs will be as tolerant as yours.

There was a best selling novel adapted into a miniseries about a not totally dissimilar situation.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slap_(novel)

Tbh your brother in law probably thought best to avoid you potentially hitting him.

You seem the type

You make yourself sound completely ridiculous with a post like this.

OP, you did nothing wrong. I'd have done the same.

I wouldn’t call 42% a small minority 🤔

Here we go ….

If you are not a parent then you cannot possibly know anything about raising children. 😂😂😂

Both! But my husband wouldn't have let that go on in the first place. My husband would have intervened. If I was the sister I'd be annoyed at both of them tbh. But luckily my own and sister and dh, are nothing like the OPs!

Why would you be annoyed at your sister for stepping in and doing the best she could?

It’s not. But it’s still a lot smaller than the repeated claim that ‘most’ posters disagree with OP.