not to help BIL with the kids while DSis goes away for a few days?

[saynooo]

DSis and BIL have four lovely children under 8. They’re good kids but obviously four children are hard work at times. DSis wants to go away with friends for a few days and has asked me to come and stay/help because BIL says he’ll find it too much on his own.

The thing is, BIL regularly goes away on cycling holidays for a week at a time and DSis manages the children perfectly well without extra help.

When he goes away, it’s just accepted that she copes, but when she wants a few days away herself, suddenly she needs support put in place for him.

I do help out with the kids generally and love spending time with them, so this isn’t about disliking them. I just feel a bit irritated by the double standard and I’m tempted to say no this time.

Is she asking because HE wants the help or is she asking because she doesn't trust him?
From youe post it isn't clear if he is being difficult or is fine with her going away or if your sister thinks he can't cope.

Yeah, but how do these men get like this?

when the women with husbands like this met them, were they withering away in a corner of a squat, unable to clean their surroundings or feed themselves? Of course they weren’t.

I don’t understand why women put up with this shit.

Please don't encourage this nonsense. Presumably she's procreated with a capable man, so this is a non-issue; or this will be the making of the man.

Imagine - not only doesn't she think he's incapable; she also has to arrange support for him. I'd be insulted if a partner thought so little of me.

Absolutely not.

Women need to stop jumping in to parent for men or they will never learn. He needs to crack on and get on with it just like your sister does when he is away.

If it means your sister doesn't go, that isn't your issue. That is their issue.

Ha ha ha ha ha no.

Honestly they should both be embarrassed.

I had my first child at 22 and my last at 40.

If I took your advice, I would never have gone away for a couple of days alone or with friends from the age of 22 until the age of 68.

No thank you.

I hate all the “it’s just 18 years” bullshit too. It’s not, if you have a good relationship with them.

Hell no would I be enabling this nonsense.

He should be embarrassed

ha I'd have three answer to this

1. no
2. bloody hell no
3. tell your idle partner to pull his finger out because I am not his skivvy

and if this means she can't go that's tough, you didn't choose her partner.

Oh I'd go and stay and be the 5th child, not lift a finger, play with the children - make sure you take lots of treats and have a great time with your nieces/nephews.

His expectation maybe that you rock up and do the work, whilst he does diddly squat - that wouldn't be happening

me either!

Personally, I’d be tempted to point out that she always manages alone and he should be able to do the same - let’s face it, he managed to create the kids so he should able to take care of the fruit of his loins!

Tell her you’ll be available in an emergency , for instance he might have to take on to the pharmacy/gp/walk-in centre, but you’re not going to be at his beck and call for the duration. The longer you keep stepping up the more BIL will rely on you to wipe his arse!

yeah fuck that!

I walk away and leave husband to it with kids all the time!

If its during school / mid week we will work out together a plan for drop offs pick ups as nursery and school in diff locations - so its helpful if we can have someone pick nursery kid up as we would struggle to get both kids at 6pm otherwise.

But that would be the same if he was away too.

Who does school pickup etc? What are their respective work hours? If they have very different work schedules then could be fair enough. Or is it when he is off work?

If she is a SIL, then presumably your DH is related directly to either BIL or SIL.

So involve your DH. He can go round /help do whatever. Channel it all through him!

I think you need to point out to your sister, that by organising someone to help her husband, she's enabling his 'inability to cope'. If he's never allowed to be on his own for any length of time with the children, then he's never going to learn to cope!!

I would agree to help towards the end but definitely not staying over (unless she lives a very long way from you) and perhaps rather than helping with the children, you can make sure the house is presentable for her return. I would tell her that she's expected to cope for a week at a time, without someone coming in to help, when her husband goes away for a week! Therefore he should be able, as a grown adult, to do the same!

Leave him to it. He needs to know what his wife has to cope with all the time. I’d say I’d be available for emergencies but he needs to figure this out himself.

No. Don’t do it.

I'd say I was busy but I was sure that BIL would cope fine.

In an ideal world you'd need no excuse and could say 'sis, you need to relax and trust Steve to look after kids that he chose to have' but I can see that some sisters (mine included) would have taken that as a criticism.

she is sister not SiL

I honestly don't know. I assume they were raised in a 'traditional' home where they watched their mother do everything and, if their father peeled the potatoes every once in a while for dinner, he was revered as a marvellous helper. Or perhaps their parents just didn't give a toss, or simply failed to teach independence.

It's usually not obvious at the start that they are so completely useless (or will become so completely useless)...it can be a bit of a boiling frog situation. Behaving that way is also a way of trapping the woman in an unhappy relationship - if it's not safe to leave the kids with them, she's trapped at home, at least until they kids are old enough to go to school, by which time, she may have lost her confidence, old work network etc. It often goes hand in hand with the woman having little or no financial resources (I'm not saying this is the OP's sister's case), so she can't go to work, because she can't pay for childcare. So she really is completely fucked at that point, with no hope of escape until the kids are older.

I wouldn't do this. Wouldn't put it past him to manufacture emergencies.

If BiL says he’ll find it too much, maybe he should reconsider all those cycling holidays if he thinks the workload is too much for one person. Otherwise, if she can do it, so can he. I’d say no on principle and tell her why.

What an utter looser he must be.
I would speak with him directly and ask why sister is fine to have kids alone, but he's not. He can't parent his own kids?!

Pathetic - When my youngest was 11 months, and the other 3 were 2, 5 & 6 I went away with some friends and my husband stayed at home with the kids. It didn't even cross his (or my) mind to ask anyone to come and help him 🙄

How about we stop feeling sorry for women who are married to these absolute drips and tell them to raise their standards.

How about we normalise really thinking about who we have children with before we have children with them.

Yes you could say that the OP’s sister may not have known how incompetent her husband was until the children came along but it sure as hell didn’t magically start one day after child number 4. Why continue to reproduce multiple children with a grown man child who can’t even look after himself or the house he lives in let alone the multiple children he helped create.

The more us as women just sit around and feel sorry for other women instead of giving them some honest home truths and encouraging them to want more for themselves the more women will end up staying in shitty situations like this.