Childcare for nephew

[Childcarehelpneeded]

My sister has recently moved house and now lives close to us. She has a son who is 9. My nephew finished the school year at his old school but will be moving to our local primary school that is a 10 minute walk from where live from September for year 5.

My sister works Monday-Thursday, leaving the house at 8am and getting home at 6pm. Her plan was to use before and after school clubs or a childminder for my nephew. She has enquired about them but breakfast club only has space on Mondays and the after school club is full. She says there are only a few childminders that cover our village annd primary school and they are all fully booked.

She has asked if our our nephew can come to our house before school on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings from 8am and after school each day Monday-Thursday, until she gets home at 6pm. He will be walking to and from school himself so we wouldn’t need to actually take him.

We don’t want to commit to doing this. We only have our youngest child at home full time as she is at college and is mostly independent. Our older children are away at university in term time. We both work from home, although I only work 3 days, but often we don’t have to start work til 10am. We sometimes have a lie in and a lazy start to the day and then we work til 6pm ish.

My sister doesn’t feel my nephew is responsible enough to leave the house on time to get himself to school, lock up and be at home for 2 hours by himself after school, which I agree with. She seems to think that as we don’t have to actually take him to school or pick him up, that this is no bother to us at all. I know in reality that won’t be the case as we will have to be up in the morning with him and obviously we wouldn’t ignore him after school. He’ll want to chat, play, have food etc and we need to be working. She says he can watch tv or go on his iPad but inevitably, it will disturb our work and our life.

I have said that this doesn’t work for us, but have offered to do 1 day if she can sort out the other days. I was a SAHM when our children were young so I didn’t have to worry about childcare and don’t know what other options there are. Are there any obvious options we are missing? We don’t have any other family locally and all her friends work full time so have their own childcare to sort out. Her ex is a waste of space and doesn’t see my nephew regularly.

Do childminder spaces become available regularly? The school have said it’s unlikely a space will open up at breakfast club and after school club as they have a long waiting list.

After years of raising our own children, we thought we were free of this and I can’t help but feel annoyed at being made to feel like we have to help. AIBU? Any advice about other childcare options welcome. Thank you.

It's one of thise stupid sentences designed to shut down any further discussion, a modern version of qed, it's only ever used to try and get an advantage, the 'village' is supposed to do the person's bidding without question.
In this instance I think that the sister had this money-saving scenario in mind when she chose to move so close to her sister and she is now expecting the OP to make all the adjustments to facilitate her childcare problems. Stick to your guns and don't even offer 1 day because that will be the thin end of the wedge.

Actually sahm who regularly takes other children on that are not even family. It feels nice to help out - especially solo mums with no support around. Took a neighbours kid to school and back for a year so yes- for my sister I would absolutely do this!

Yes I never said it was possible for everyone, but we've zero evidence that it's completely impossible here. My husband could have easily just sat back and said it simply wasn't possible in his industry too, but someone always has to be first. Parents with nursery/school age children, including single parents who have less flexibility, are a huge swathe of the working population and lots of companies can't afford for them all to resign every time they hit a temporary childcare blip. Recruiting and training people up is expensive.

She's working not doing her own thing!!!

Meh, I’d let him have a key and get a doorbell camera.

he’s not a baby. I’d tell sister to provide easy use snacks for him to have in the fridge for after school and probably check on him when he came back and then get back to work.

it’s not ideal. And I wouldnt cancel holidays etc but if I could help without much effort. Which this is then I would.

I would help my sister. I’d rather support my sister than see her struggle just so I can have a lie in.

it’s really a low level inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. And as much as you like a lie in most adults aren’t sleeping past 8 you will be awake you don’t need to get out of bed.

he can just text you when he comes in and before he leaves. Doesn’t matter how chatty he is you can explain the rules that you are working so he needs to do his homework and can watch his iPad. But no disturbing unless it’s an emergency.

she’s your sister not a stranger ffs. Just tell her you expect her to sort it as soon as slots become available.

and you get to tell other people how they should manage their own life because?

And as much as you like a lie in most adults aren’t sleeping past 8 you will be awake you need to get out of bed.
he can just text you when he comes in and before he leaves

You mean they stay in bed as the child arrives, and they just continue to lie there while he gets himself breakfast etc downstairs? That's assuming they are actually awake. I don't know but if I were op I wouldn't be able to stay in bed knowing someone else's child was busying himself downstairs, turning on the TV and getting himself some cornflakes.

And what if they want to have early morning sex while the kid is downstairs?

Do you even know what those words mean? Being a people pleaser is when you put other people’s feelings above your own by doing things you don’t want to do, and being a doormat is when you let yourself get bulldozed into doing things because you don’t assert yourself.

Wanting to or being willing to help your sister out with childcare isn’t any of the above. I know many of you think the default mentality is to run away from providing such support, or the “I suffered alone so you have to” mantra, but some of us are happy to do so and have the means.

And what’s unfair? OP can say no if she doesn’t want to. It’s not unreasonable to see if family can help out. And if said family doesn’t want to, or can’t, they can refuse to.

Have you read the OPs detailed posts.

She likes having a lie in.
He isn’t allowed a key at his own house as his mum doesn’t trust him with it, so why should the OP?
He doesn’t just sit quietly, so that would disturb the OP who is working,
She has dogs so he would need to be supervised.
She doesn’t want to.

This

You need to say you are not willing to make that sort of commitment, you are both still working yourselves, and she'll need to make other arrangements for her child.

OP is working, do you not see the difference? Why do you need to be a SAHM if looking after children whilst working is such an easy task? Do both.

this. Fail to plan; plan to fail.

You need to say no from day 1, or she'll expect you to keep doing it while she pretends to be looking for other alternatives.

I can totally understand not wanting to do it ... and you'll be tying yourself to being there every week of the school year if you agree to even 1 day a week. I'm sorry, but it's not a reasonable ask. You and your DH both work, your children are older and more independent, you're not messing with your own careers and schedules to look after her child so she doesn't have to mess up hers.

This plus advertise for a nanny. Sites include Sitters, Koru Kids, Bubble, Childcare.co.uk. She won't want to do this as I suspect you were always her backup plan. If she'd called the school in the spring, I can guarantee the childcare situation would have been little different!

Your college age child could possibly offer to do some minding for money?

When you have children, you have to make sacrifices and adjust your working pattern, pay for childcare and try and juggle balls to make your weeks work.

The sister appears to want OP to do all of the ball juggling for her so she doesn’t have to!

The OP is not a sahm. She has a full time job.

And doesn't want to be forced to do her sister's job of parenting too. Perfectly fair, even if OP wasn't working - but yep she does.

Also, for anyone saying "he'll quietly let himself in at his age, you won't know he's there" etc, no chance.

The boy next door is 9 (neighbour's stepson so isn't here all the time), and he doesn't sit still for a second. His mates are always knocking round for him and loitering at our door while they wait. They shout and boot balls everywhere.

Re op, this would happen during the after-school sessions the sister wants op to do daily. She'd have an endless round of kids knocking and loitering "oh can Charlie come out to play?"

When next door's kid is staying here, he and his mates are all absolutely hyper. I hate it when he's staying next door, if I'm being honest. There are up to 10 kids running around, kicking footballs everywhere, etc.

They also scream a lot. Not great for op as she works at home.

That's the reality of looking after a 9 year old! Only going by my experience of the boy next door. It drives me mad and he isn't even here all that much.

SAHM mums make the choice to be time-rich and cash poor.
Other mums decide to work and be cash rich and time poor.

Perfectly valid either way, but when the time poor decide to use the SAHM, do they at least compensate them? Can't have it both ways.

Why does the "help" always seem to be going in one direction?

I wouldn’t expect my children to take advantage of each other but i’d hope that i’d raised siblings who when times are tough can be sacrificial.

Thankfully tough times tend not to last, but what does last is the memory of those who helped, showed kindness, were empathetic & demonstrated love.

I don’t believe life is tit for tat, her sister isn’t less deserving of help now because OP herself as a SAHM didn’t ask for help previously, if we all felt like that most people wouldn’t ever go out their way to be charitable

I don’t know why you are saying that when both his aunt and his mother say he can’t do those things.

I would do it. Your sister is raising a child alone. You had the privilege of staying home with yours while you had a Co parent. Help a sister out

However it's not OPs job to do her sister's job of parenting. And as she doesn't want to, that's that really.