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 😂

There’s nothing in OP’s posts to say she did either.

Threatened to hit?
Where? When?

You are OTT OP.
Toddlers do those sort of things with no malice.
YABU++++

The dog doesn't know that

My parents have Welsh slate ones. They are sharp and could do a lot of damage.

What ? It’s perfectly true.

Yep. And that’s the whole point. Which many posters are wilfully ignoring. Children learn by experience - if something is hot and you touch it, it teaches you not to touch it again. Unfortunately dogs biting if startled isn’t a lesson anyone wants a toddler to learn, so the adult takes charge and does whatever is needed to get the point across so that the child doesn’t have to learn by experience.

Nowhere and never. She asked the child how they would feel if someone hit them. That’s been translated as a threat. It’s batshit.

So you wanted OP to leave the child hitting the dog while she got his mum ?

He’s a baby though really, probably didn’t understand at all, a gently taking it away and explaining how we mustn’t do that as it could hurt your doggy and how we take care of animals etc would have sufficed.
I agree that Bil should have been watching more closely to attempt to intervene before it happened, but these things happen with kids.
Do you have children?

I'm with you, as you've described it seems fine and hardly traumatic for the child. All the 'gentle' parents on here are so wet.

Given your parents have asked you to smooth things over with your sister (who is being unreasonable) could you do a #sorry/not sorry apology? i.e "I'm sorry if you feel I handled it wrong. If there is a next time I won't interfere but I suggest you & BiL don't leave child unsupervised when the dog is around as he's obviously not yet old enough for that. And we'd all hate Nephew to get bitten wouldn't we? Oh and just to be clear I did not yank his arm. "

Maybe text it or WhatsApp and show it to your parents to prove you sent it. I would in fact go out when possible next few times they come around so things cool off.

I think it was right to stop trh toddler but you did it without the skill a parent would.

When you have kids of that age you will realise that they are little more than babies.

I think the adults are at fault for not supervising more closely.

But they weren’t made of Welsh Slate or concrete so no harm done or do we want to guess what else they might be made from and try and catastrophize how horrendous it might have been even though it wasn’t? Dog was fine. Everybody stand down. 😂

And kid was fine too 🤷

Some of the responses are totally batshit.

Letting a child hit a dog is incredibly stupid. It's cruel to the dog and dangerous for the child. BIL was being negligent.

I understand that how OP handled it may demonstrate a lack of a fulsome understanding of child development...but she isn't the parent, and only had to step in because of BIL's negligence.

Even if you are of the view that the "how would you like it..." carries an implicit threat, I'm sure most of us recognize it as a pretty standard turn of phrase that is intended to be used for teaching empathy.

If you are very particular in how you would like your child to be supervised (which is fine) then you need to actually supervise them. You don't get to check out of supervising your own children then get angry because someone else, who was forced to intervene due to your ineptitude, didn't address the (potentially dangerous) situation in the exact way you would have if you weren't too stupid and lazy to try.

Nephew's about to pull a hot cup of tea onto him, but don't "yank" his arm away OP it's aggressive/bullying 🙄

@Mmemm “The parent in the room could have been supervising more closely” so that’s an issue with your brother in law but you took it out on your little toddler nephew?!

I suspect if OP had reported that the dog had bitten the child it would be a very different thread. And OP would still be getting flak, but for not intervening in time !!

Thats a sick and dishonest way of (mis)interpreting what happened.

Toddler trumps dog sorry 🤷‍♀️ quite normal behaviour for a toddler. They haven’t learned these lessons yet. They don’t understand the dog is old, it’s not kind, might hurt etc. you need to teach them not grab them and tell them off like that. More appropriate to take toddlers hand and gently say oooh nooo lucky is old we must not burn him like that. Then look at the dad and say “is t that right dad” to get him to parent HIS child whilst also stating your boundaries

To me it depends on how firmly you took hold of his arm. If it was a ‘yank’, a pull or something else rough, I can see why the parents would be annoyed although they themselves should have been more vigilant. If it was more of a holding his arm to prevent hitting then Yanbu.
In my family, even if I had grabbed a niece or nephews arm slightly more firmly than was ideal and been cross, my sibling would forgive me because I’m human, humans make mistakes, and I was protecting my pet and the child wasn’t hurt.

If you are honest with yourself and think perhaps you were bit rough, I think I would message the parent and say something
‘look I’m sorry if I held your DS arm a bit more firmly than I intended. I panicked when I saw him hitting the dog and made a mistake. I do think Tommy should have been supervising him more closely but I don’t want to fall out over this’.
If you are absolutely sure you weren’t rough but holding him in the same way anyone might remove a child from a risky situation, then I would say
‘I’m sorry we’ve fallen out over this but I was not rough with your DS and I don’t regret protecting my dog from being hit. Tommy should have been watching him more closely’ and leave it at that. You’ve done all you can.

100% agree with you, your sister is an idiot!

Why? He shouldn't be hitting anything in the face. She didn't hurt him and he's learnt a important lesson.

Agree! The fact she was hungover laid on the sofa too and the dad didn’t stand up and say wtf are you doing talking to my baby like that! Shows he was calm and she was irate IMO and he’s gone back to his wife (as that’s her sister) and said you deal with it or I will.

No she doesn’t - but she could frame it like that, like she was worried about DN to smooth it over for her parents.
its easier that way.