To let my niece stay when she refuses to see her mum?

[ShadowShapes]

My sister has 2 children, my niece is 20 and my nephew is only 10 months, so a huge age gap. They have different fathers.

My niece is at university and since my sister had the baby, my niece has refused to spend holidays at home, preferring to stay in her uni city with friends. My sister isn’t happy with this but has had to accept it. My niece has told her that she doesn’t want anything to do with her or the baby. She thinks her mum is mad for having another child. My sister and partner have been together for 5 years and he moved in when my niece was 17. My niece got on ok with him but didn’t like him living with them.

My niece planned to stay in her uni city for summer but asked if she can spend the summer with us a couple of weeks ago. I said she could but that she should tell her mum. She did and my sister said we shouldn’t let her stay with us and we will make things worse.

My niece came to us last week and my sister is angry. I said that I am being neutral but that I will speak to my niece about how she’s feeling and try to help them sort out their relationship. My sister thinks I should tell her that she can’t stay with us but I’ve said she will always be welcome here. My niece is such a nice person but she is adamant she wants nothing to do with her mum, her partner or the new baby.

I feel really in the middle but my niece is still really young and I wasn’t going to turn her away. I’ve tried to put myself in my sisters shoes but it’s difficult as I can’t imagine having another child now and how my children would feel about that.

I’m going to let her stay but going forward what would you do? I’ve suggested to my niece that her mum comes for a coffee or to meet for a walk with or without the baby to try to sort things out but my niece isn’t interested. She just seems to be getting on with her life and seems happy without her mum in it. She helps around the house, gets on well with my children who are also home from uni, goes out with friends and is working. It’s like she has just wiped her mum out of her life, They had a good relationship until her mums partner moved in. She says she feels her mum put him first and although her partner is ok, she didn’t like living with another person.

What i want to say, is you may not know the whole story.
I am NC with my mum. Most people know her side of the story. I am the bad person.
Spoilt. Vindictive. Truth is I removed myself from a situation that wasn't emotionally healthy for me. I had to remove myself from everyone I knew from my childhood because she got in with her side first.

If you want a relationship with your niece, have the relationship but dont try and make her patch things up with your sister. If theres a deeper reasoning to the fall out DN will feel hurt by your interference.

You are doing the right thing letting her stay with you. You are in a position to keep the family relationship open and hopefully they will build a new relationship going forward. But your neice feels alienated and it is difficult having a sibling that is two decades younger!

You are right to let your niece stay.

One day sister and niece will make up, and if you hadn’t let your niece stay because of your sister, your niece may always have remembered that as you not being there for her.

I have nieces/nephews of similar ages, they are my priority over my siblings, as they need more support.

I’d let niece stay. She has a relationship with you and your children outside of her mum.
I wonder if the new boyfriend has behaved inappropriately towards her at 17, it’s a very extreme reaction to cut off mum.
I’d want to know niece was ok. She’ll presumably be working a lot to make up shortfall in her student loan. If she’s on minimum wage loan her mum is supposed to contribute £6000 a year. If mum is saying I can’t pay that but can afford ivf and a baby I can see why things are strained.

I am team niece here, her reaction might be extreme but it sounds as if your sis didn’t handle things well. For ten years your sis and niece were a unit of two. Your niece was beginning to build her own life but at a point when she was doing a levels, picking university, getting ready to stand on her own two feet your sister brought a man she barely knew into the house most nights and then moved him in. She stopped spending one on one time with niece so presumably communication suffered. She told your niece that she wasn’t going to financially support her, she demonstrated that she no longer wanted to emotionally support her. These are pretty core elements of being a parent!
You say your niece was uncomfortable with him in the house and that your sister has withdrawn from the rest of the family.
At best your sister has cast off her old family, your niece, to have IVF and a baby and play happy families with the new man.
More worryingly would be the possibility that he is controlling and isolating her.
At worst your niece was uncomfortable about how he behaved to her and couldn’t say that to her mum.

I think it makes sense that it feels like you're stuck in the middle, it's a tricky situation, and one that I think I have mroe time for when it's family than otherwise. If I had a good relationship with both neice and sister but they were at odds, I wouldn't stop either of them from spending time with me. That's family. I think it's ok for family to circle in aroudn the whole, but not to circle in at the exclusion of one unless they've committed an unforgivable act. So, I think you're sister is being unreasonable to ask you not to allow your neice to stay with you. Their relationship is for them to sort out.

Presumably the household income is treated as higher for student loans purposes now as mum has a partner in the home, with no obligation to contribute.

oh look flying pig....

Wouldn't have moving the man in have affected how much financial support your niece could have applied for though.

Pigs might fly at what?

Your sister has moved on and prioritised the new relationship with time, attention and money, leaving her eldest daughter with scraps. Don’t reject your niece as she has been rejected by her mother. Your sister needs to start be an adult rather than playing perfect family mark 2.

Actually I don't think it is. The niece is an adult and if she had decided to ditch the whole family and go live in her student digs, no one would know anything. There are many many 20 year olds who lead their own lives for whatever reason.
If I had said to somebody, even a relative, "you are not to share information about me with xxx" then that would be it. Not my location, not how I am, nothing.

and of course, the OP will know where she is and how she is.

Thank goodness your niece has you! That's what I say...

It's an interesting time when you/your child leaves home for uni'.

It's when your child is no longer dependent on you for the basic necessities of life, and the cracks in your relationship can show in a way you are unprepared for.

You don't have to play happy families with your family, and just suck it up buttercup if you are angry and unhappy with your parents, which can be a difficult adjustment for your parents to come to terms with, if they are used to doing what they want, when they want, and any negative consequences resulting in terms of their relationship with you not coming back on them.

Your niece's Mum made her choices. Your niece seems to have communicated fairly clearly with her mother how unhappy she was with these choices. She went ahead regardless. Her mother's choices, her mother's actions, and now, her mother's consequences. Her mother of course, is free to make her own choices. Her daughter is equally free now, to make her own choices in response to her mother's choices.

I think it's pretty bloody nasty of her mother, actually, to try and remove her daughter's remaining family support, and relationships. I can't see it actually helping her relationship with her daughter, if her daughter becomes aware of it.

Exactly. Moving a bloke in when your dc is 17 has significant implications in terms of funding. If mum was a low earner then she was potentially looking at getting full loan and bursaries (usually only available to full loan recipients)
Overnight by moving him in the girl is thousands a year down and mum refuses to contribute her required contribution.

It makes sense that the niece might not want to live with the baby, but refusing to do so much as see your own half-sibling in person is bizarre.

its a baby. DNA makes no difference. I mean why should she be bothered at all?

"One day sister and niece will make up,"

Oh I see. I think they will most likely make up. Whether it’s next week, next year or next decade is anyone’s guess!

I can't see why they would.

There's an awful lot of hate on this thread for a sister that @ShadowShapes is close to. If she was as evil as most people think, I doubt that OP would have much to do with her.

I think letting the niece stay, but remaining a potential conduit for contact between mother and daughter at some point in the future, is the way to go. Which means not blatantly taking sides, but as a pp put it
be very wary of siding too much with her. There are aspects where she’s being reasonable and parts where she really isn’t. I’d encourage her to realise that adults are flawed too, and very few (if any) of us have perfect parents

Also, and importantly, make it clear to your sister that there's more chance of a future relationship while her daughter remains linked to the family through you @ShadowShapes .

It sounds like you tried to bring this to your sister's attention but she ignored you. And now she is living the consequences. I can't help wondering if there is more to the story than perhaps you know about.

I’m currently in a situation where my aunt thinks she’s being neutral between myself and my sister but she really isn’t. She’s actually dismissing my justified pain at something my sister did to me.

All I’m saying is that although you may well think you’re choosing neutrality and not getting involved, other people may not see it that way. Your sister clearly doesn’t. You’re choosing your niece over your sister’s justified pain at being rejected by her which isn’t necessarily a neutral position.

You know you’ve been on Mumsnet too long when…

"It's an interesting time when you/your child leaves home for uni'.

It's when your child is no longer dependent on you for the basic necessities of life, and the cracks in your relationship can show in a way you are unprepared for."

I think you've got something there @mbosnz , about the cracks in the relationship showing and OP's sister being unprepared for that.

The cracks were created when the niece was just 15 and OP's sister met her now-partner, who "was staying over most nights within weeks so almost living there and then properly moved in after about 15 months." So from aged 15 onwards mum's boyfriend was "almost living there" and we have no idea what that was like for the niece. Even if he had been the kindest and most respectful man in the world, he was a stranger (to the niece) entering their two-female home and changing the dynamic of niece's home life - at a pretty formative time in her life. GCSEs and A levels and finding your feet in romance/attraction, the mid-teens are a pretty stressful part of every girl's (and boy's) life.

And then add to that fracturing of the home dynamic the apparent lack of concern by the mother for the daughter where they had previously "had a good relationship". Now, the daughter removing herself from this new uncomfortable home dynamic and to the comfortable wider family dynamic of her aunt's house via 'sleepovers' is seen by the mother as "just what teens did with their cousins and not to do with her being upset with the new partner living with them." For me, that inability/unwillingness to acknowledge her daughter's unhappiness is one huge crack in their relationship - and all the mother's own work to boot.

Now the mother has moved from unconcern ("I spoke to my sister about it at the time but she told me my niece was fine and it wasn’t my business") to anger ("My niece came to us last week and my sister is angry") and is trying to exert control over her daughter's life ("My sister thinks I should tell her that she can’t stay with us").

I think @Tryagain26 put her finger on it with her observation "It's also telling that the mother was perfectly happy for her daughter to stay in her university town over the summer but she doesn't want her staying with her Aunt. Is that because of how it looks?"

It is precisely because of how it looks, because it casts those cracks in the relationship into huge relief. Questions could be asked (by friends, neighbours, acquaintances), questions such as 'why is your daughter staying with your sister and not you?'. A question she is now having to ask of herself, and she's very much avoiding answering herself truthfully, she's totally in denial that it could be anything to do with her past behaviour.

Her daughter staying in her uni town, she could ignore those cracks - her daughter staying with her sister, not so much. And that's why she's angry. Because she can no longer ignore the cracks, cracks that she created.

And her daughter has the measure of her, hasn't she?
"My niece told me that she feels like she hasn’t had a mum for years and she has dealt with it, moved on and made a life for herself. She says her mum is only bothered now because she’ll feel embarrassed that she is staying with us, but didn’t have a big problem with her not having much contact when she was staying in her uni city for holidays."

"I’m going to let her stay but going forward what would you do?"
I would do exactly what you are doing, @ShadowShapes . Welcome your niece into your home, give her the 'home base' that every one of us needs. As for her relationship with her mother, there is nothing you can do, nothing you should do either. Those cracks will remain for as long as your sister insists she didn't fuck up five years ago and continued to fuck up ever since.

Currently, you "see my sister, her partner and my nephew regularly ... although I don’t know what will happen now as my sister obviously isn’t happy with my decision to let my niece stay with us." All you can hope for is that your sister doesn't make another bad decision here. She may be happy to pretty much erase her firstborn from her life ("didn’t have a big problem with her not having much contact when she was staying in her uni city for holidays") but she has no right to insist that you should do the same. If she decides to erase the rest of her family from her life instead, there's really nothing you can do until/if she realises her mistake. ((hug))