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 😂

<Shark Jump mode initiated>

The misogyny in some posts is breathtaking. How on earth did you arrive at that conclusion ? He’s the parent. He was in the room. He should have been aware of the child approaching the dog and the one to intervene when he saw what was about to happen. He didn’t do any of that and managed to weasel out of his responsibility by setting his wife against her sister.

Your behaviour sounds a little more aggressive than it needed to be. And I don’t think you know much about toddler behaviour. Of course you had to stop your nephew doing this, but there are better ways. And the brother-in-law is an idiot of course for not addressing this at the time.

Aw. I’m glad my sisters are kinder to my wee ones than this.

…sure, I’ve never said most posters disagree with OP, but the post I was quoting literally said she is ignoring a “small minority”

OP has already explained that the dog is docile and unlikely to bite, but she admits she can’t be sure so yes, l think she was looking after the child too. Better to be OTT than end up in A&E wouldn’t you say ? And just as an aside what exactly do you find unreasonable in not wanting a child to hit your elderly dog ?

But others HAVE said that. So whilst I agree that a ‘small minority’ is inaccurate, it’s in keeping with the rest of the hyperbole and gross exaggeration going on in the thread.

I’m going to guess that nephew is a bit of an irritant to the OP and in her hungover state she couldn’t find it in her to be patient with him.

I'm a bit confused about who owns this dog. It is described by the OP both as 'my dog' and as 'a family pet'. Whose responsibility was it to be supervising the dog around the child (it was clearly the parents' responsibility to be supervising the child around the dog)?

and yet, had you bothered to read the OPs posts, you'd see she states that she babysits the nephew, takes him out for days, bothers to find craft activities she thinks he will like. I find it helps to have all the information before I open my mouth. Try it.

Have you experienced many instances where your child has been hitting a sleeping animal with an object and your sisters had to react swiftly to prevent him/her possibly coming to harm?

Hi @Mmemm - I think you did fine btw but just some advice from me for the future.
In these types of scenarios with kids and animals - if you’re protecting the animal against an exploring toddler/ kid pulling a tail/ hitting head/ throwing things - always reframe it as “you were protecting the kid and moving in quickly/ sharply to prevent a worse scenario”. In my experience another parent will never accept a scenario where you shouted at their kid to protect your animal.

This reframing will prevent another adult being too annoyed with you and you’ve protected your animal (and actually their kid but they never see that).
Then you can teach the kids how to behave around animals more calmly when not in the heat of the moment.

and just because this seems to be important on this thread today - I’m a mother of now late teens and have multiple pets nephews and nieces and friends of kids coming round.

The dog is the family pet.

And it was minding its business sleeping on the sofa until teeny came over and commenced bashing it with a coaster.

Yes. They are always kind. They are good with kids 🤷🏻‍♀️

The kid's dad is a prat.

This was a very dissimilar situation about a proper slap not someone holding an arm to protect a child that is about to hit a dog, possibly resulting in being bitten. It is also written terribly.

So you have to reframe things for gentle parents because they can’t think further than their own kids… says a lot about these kind of parents and the self absorbed children they raise.

Oh please. If she was a consistently involved and loving auntie her sister wouldn’t be reacting so strongly to this.

It is clearly a family dog bought by parents. I am assuming…. And yes I know I am assuming - but sounds like if it’s 12 and a golden retriever (ie a dog you get as a puppy) that it was bought by parents when their children were younger. I called our family dog ‘my’ dog

I think you're just making things up for your own amusement. Weird.

It’s quite concerning that you ADMIT you’ve experience many situations in which your children have been bashing a sleeping animal with an object. 😬

Maybe you need your own thread?

I’ve read it all now. The parent sat on his arse reading and ignoring his 2 year old in the presence of a dog is less to blame than the aunt who was looking out for her dog? And then the useless tosser snitched to his wife and made it sound worse than it was,because he didn’t want his wife to think he hadn’t been properly supervising? OP I’d have done the same as you.

Some parents are that twatty. Especially lazy ones like the father in this scenario.