9 year old niece behaviour is problematic

[NavyFox]

9 year old behaviour
Anybody else struggle with behaviour of their 9 Yr olds?

My niece is 9 years old and is becoming a problem with her behaviour.

The way she talks to me is so rude. I greeted her at the school gates with my sister and she rolled her eyes as she came to us. We asked her what the problem was and it was because I was there . She said I see her all the time. The last time I was at the school gates was 6 months ago but I do see them 1-2 times a week.
I ask her how her day was and she tells me to stop asking questions.
Other days , I tell her she looks lovely , she rolls her eyes and sneers at me.
She tells me to shut up, shouts at me etc in day to day conversation. For example, she fell off a zip line so I was encouraging her to have another go as she was upset. She did and I was saying hold on as she let go too soon on the previous go, she told me to shut up. My sister said I was embarrassing her.
I go to my sisters and park in the street. She's playing out with friends and ignores me. I shout her over and she runs off. Or I ask for help with carrying something and she says no.
I play a game with her and if I win she goes mad shouting and runs off.
I have been nothing but nice to her. I can only remember one occasion last year where I shouted at her as I'd had enough of listening to her being so obnoxious to her mum. But that's not the norm and I don't usually get involved.

She is not my child so I do not want to tell her off but it is getting to the stage where I will lose my rag with her. As I would if an adult spoke to me the way she does. Her dad doesn't like other people telling her off including my mum so I leave it. But I don't like the way she speaks to me.

My sister seems to have lost the will with her. I've noticed she just shouts and repeats herself all the time with her. She tells me she is just fed up with her behaviour and has given up.

I no longer enjoy being in her company. It feels like shes a naughty teenager!
I have a baby so I have not experienced this type of behaviour. Is this normal?!
Do other people experience this with 9yr olds?

I'm very much in this camp! I'm gobsmacked at folks blaming the OP for trying to make an effort with this nine year old, and making excuses for this child's appalling rudeness. The lack of boundaries and effective parenting now is going to result in some pretty disturbing behaviour when she is a teenager. I would ask the OP's sister to read posts on MN about 16/17 year olds that drink/smoke weed in their room/swear at family members, trash the house, etc. Such behavior doesn't emerge overnight. It emerges as a result of years of permissive parenting, and children not being given boundaries, and not facing the consequences of breaching them.

There are three adults, you, your sister, her husband, and one child, the 9 year old. The child is acting out. Do you think a) it's solely the child because you, your sister and her husband are just so perfect and lovely? or b) there is something in her environment, you included, that is sparking or contributing to her behavior? I'll give you a hint, it's (b), the second one.

The entire family needs counseling (you, too) and the girl needs specific individual help. The mother and father have to stop abdicating their role as her parent. In the alternative, all you and the other two adults can go back to pretending it's entirely the girl's fault. In the meantime, stop trying to engage with her. Let her come to you if she wants to. You're putting pressure on her. Stop.

Why are you at your sisters 1-2 a week? Have you not got friends to see? I don’t have time to see anyone this often! Reduce your visits, find other things to do.
And yeah people treat you the way you allow them. You don’t need to shout at her or tell her off but you definitely have to set clear boundaries that you won’t be spoken to this way,

My least favourite years of parenting were aged 9 to 11. I think they can really start to push boundaries at that age as they move from being a young child to a teenager. It’s like they are more than ready for high school and things calmed down once they started because they’ve got more independence.

You’re mostly the problem. Sounds like your niece has hit the preteen stage a little early and, she’s outspoken. Nothing wrong with girls being outspoken. You want her to be sweet and she just isn’t. You have to leave her alone. You should still love her and be a good aunt but you also need to respect her space and accept who she has become. Learn to roll with her and enjoy her antics. She will grow out of this stage but it might get worse before it gets better.

Indeed😱

Oh behave yourself!

If course the niece is behaving abominably, and there's no real excuse for it. But given that she is, I was about to post to this effect, but was beaten to it by this poster:

"I go to my sisters and park in the street. She's playing out with friends and ignores me. I shout her over and she runs off. Or I ask for help with carrying something and she says no"
Don’t call her over. Either go straight in or give a small, casual wave in her direction and then go into your sister’s house. You don’t need to call her over, she’s 9, she wants to play with her mates, not come and chat to an aunty she sees every week.

There's really no need to call over a child that sees so much of you. You're there to see your sister, so just focus on that and detach from your niece for a while.

I have a 9 year old and if he spoke to me or his aunt like that I’d be furious. I really don’t think it’s normal 9 year old behaviour judging my his friends either.

One of my GDs did this at about the same age. I dealt with it by studiously ignoring it every time, walking away and doing something else. She did not need me to tell her it was rude - she knew perfectly well of course. And I doubt she even knew why she was doing it to be honest.

I would pounce on anything good that she did and give her attention.

A year later and she is back to being a lovely human being.

My (then) 8yo niece punched me in the stomach when I was 41 weeks pregnant and screamed that she hoped my baby died.
She was an utter nightmare and ruined every single event that we did as a family. She was at times a genuinely a horrible child.

this pretty much continued until she had a baby at 17 and she is much better. I do fully believe that she is neurodivergent and her parents weren’t the best (she wasn’t abused but her behaviour definitely made her parents not care), I tried really hard with her and she did love me very much but she just had an evil temper.

The child has no manners and her parents encourage it by not pulling her up. Ignore the little brat

This isn't even close to normal, no idea why anyone is pretending you're at fault in any way. DS2 can be fantastically rude to DH & I occasionally but he's never, EVER, spoken rudely to a single family member outside this house. None of our 3 have. None of my nieces & nephews have been rude towards me out DH or my parents either.

Unfortunately your niece sounds bratty & isn't being guided well.

TBH if you’ve got your own child I’d be taking the ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’ approach. Any supervision you try won’t work as her parents don’t bother and you’ll just end up falling out with your sister. Why don’t you just keep contact and chat with her minimal, not ignore her exactly but just leave her be and don’t let her bother you.

So I did think that your trying to have a relationship with her was a bit much but it's just a smidge of how she is and how she's being to you.

Her mum cannot give up.
Not sure where people got the dad doesn't want the girl being shouted at from, I haven't read that anywhere 🤷🏼‍♀️
But if she speaks to you rudely, absolutely tell her to not speak to you like that!

I'd stop trying. It's sad but she doesn't deserve the energy you spend trying to forge something that in her eyes is 🙄

What do mum and dad do for a living?
Attitude can also come from what they put into their brains from what they see.

My DD is 7 but a year ago she was coming out with sass from the YouTube channel she had been watching.
I made sure she couldn't watch anything like that anymore and her attitude has gotten better. She comes out with the occasional sass but she's a cheeky 7yr old. She knows better than to speak to us rudely.

Don't meet her at school with your sister.

Sounds like she doesn’t like you.
Back off - stop imposing yourself on her.

My kids have never told any adult to shut up. They would never be so rude to a relative. This girl is behaving very rudely and I expect it is to do with how she’s been brought up at home. I would just do minimal engagement from now on.

I agree with this.

If an adult spoke to me like this I wouldn’t be shouting at them, I’d be backing off. Seems like the best solution here too.

I would back off as another poster suggested. But I wouldn't hold it against your sister. It's probably not all her fault. The girl's anger towards alpacas at age 7 is unusual behaviour suggesting a quite profound lack of understanding. I would guess she has special needs of some kind which will probably be diagnosed one day. Don't know if there's a tactful way of suggesting this to your sister.

I’d concentrate on your own baby. Your niece doesn’t need this amount of input. My DD at 9 needed space after school - and a top up of food! I’d reduce the times you see her but I would respond if she was rude. Who needs this behaviour?

There's quite a lot ging on here.

1 Your niece is not being effectively parented by either of her parents who are either ineffectual or exhausted.

2 your expectations are quite high - nothing more irritating than the non-parent aunt/uncle who seems to think that children should behave perfectly all the time.

3 I would actually be wondering about some ND in your niece that is fuelling this behaviour, which is then exacerbated by the poor parenting already mentioned. It is not unusual for children who are ND to struggle even more becuase the tools and techniques that can help them are not being deployed, and instead they're shouted at all the time.

Ignore her, do not interact with her at all unless she is pleasant. Leave the parenting to her parents.
She may or may not improve her behaviour but I would stop actively trying your way because it's not working and she's not your kid. She does sound unpleasant and not unlike a relatives granddaughter at the same age, sneery, spoilt, (££££skincare, at fucking9),rude,unpleasant, etc. If she inititiates a contact with you that's pleasant react similarly ie reward her good behaviour, otherwise ignore completely the unwanted, so eye rolls ignore, you see her outside when visiting, ignore, and so on shell hopefully get the message that being pleasant to you equals reward, oh and any presents would be curtailed if they were met with disdain.

Absolutely. What a little madam, all caused by her dad who she probably adores.

You love her, and you love your sister, you care and want to see them. Ignore/tut bad behaviour and let her come back when she grows out of it. Don’t make an announcement just continue speaking to your sister, let them parent her. Good luck 🩷

It sounds like both her parents are crap parents. You can’t fix this and I honestly wouldn’t even try. Her parents need to teach her appropriate and respectful behaviour in the home. They are choosing not to, so there isn’t much you can do other than to set appropriate boundaries (call her out on rudeness) and let her know you are there if she ever wants to talk. My guess is that she hasn’t had a happy home life to be acting out like this and that’s on your sister and BIL.