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.

Her home has changed drastically since she was a teenager but it sounds like her mother is happy, she’s off living her life too.
I would let her stay with me. I would also be honest with her, her reaction and treatment towards her mother is awful, she’s behaving like a child.
The new baby hasn’t done anything wrong.

It is not her nieces sibling. It is a step sibling.
I am team niece here. When once you get a partner you don’t just stop having days out with your child. Teens/young adults have feelings too.
I bet your sister has not been up to visit her daughter at uni without her partner and baby in tow.
OP maybe you should suggest to your sister that she spends a day alone with her daughter.

team niece here, and how lovely of you OP to give her the chance to live with family for a while.

OPs sister was selfish and moved a new man in with a 17 year old then basically either binned off any mother/daughter time completely or brought an interloper.

In niece's position i would be doing the same. Good on her for setting boundaries.

There is no need for niece to contact her mother at all. If the mother wants to try to build bridges, that is on her.

Not wanting to live with her mother and the partner and baby is not the same as refusing to even meet or speak to them, or even to her mother on her own.

You fortunately have a relationship with both your sister and niece. This will hopefully continue.
Personally, I think you are doing exactly the right thing in supporting your niece. Your sister hasn't listened to her daughter and you have. Tough if your sister doesn't like it!

Then you and I are very different.

But babies don't stay babies forever do they. And a sibling grows up into an adult who shares at least some of your experiences of being brought up by your parent. And that sort of connection is very valuable emotionally.

Of course its her nieces sibling that is the most ridiculous sentence I've ever read

But then the niece would have stayed at her Uni house.

How would this have helped. She’s been let down by her mother. She doesn’t need her aunt to let her down too

My relationship with my mum broke down some 12/13 years ago, I’m now in my 50s. At the time my DS was like 7 or 8.

my aunt invited us up to theirs for Boxing Day every year since then, it’s been an absolute pleasure and privilege to be included in their family and I’ve grown closer to my cousins potentially than I am with my sibling.

your niece needs some family, and by the sounds of it, she was never happy with this bloke being inserted into her life and now a baby has been brought into it all, no wonder she wants distance. I think you’re only scratching the surface @ShadowShapes with the problems under that roof.

be there for her, you’re a godsend

It’s a half sibling if you want to be pedantic.

With a 20 year age gap though it’s never going to be a proper sibling and it’s weird to suggest the niece has to see the baby because of ‘blood’

So your Dsis had relationships when DD was younger, 7 to 15 and never introduced any of these men, she waited until DD was 16 to move her partner in after 15 months, it wasn’t not the best decision but it was far from the worst decision.

Plenty of parents move on within a year, moving a man in and having a few children, in terms of single parents who are still looking for love, I think her DM was fair.

Why has she no money to support DD if she is a high achieving person? Has she had a job over the years? Can she access credit? Who pays for uni ATM I don’t understand that part.

It is a half sibling with 20 years between them.
There is no reason for them to be close.

Your sister has been very foolish, OP. What ever was she thinking moving a new man into her home while her daughter was doing her A levels?

Any decent man would have understood that the relationship had to be taken slowly until the daughter went to Uni.
I think niece did very well to get the grades she needed to go to Uni, with all the added stress of having an unfamiliar man living in her home
Of course you should have a separate relationship with DN, which is nothing to do with DSis. DSis is vvu to ask you not to do so. Hopefully in time, both their attitudes will soften and things will calm down but it's not your job to push them together.

I’m in the middle of this one. We’ve all known women who prioritise a new partner over their child and that is very wrong. However, the niece was 19 and at uni when she decided her mum shouldn’t be allowed to have a baby and that is completely out of order.

OP, I’d obviously let your niece stay but 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.

I think thats so disgusting.

Plenty of parents move on within a year, moving a man in and having a few children, in terms of single parents who are still looking for love, I think her DM was fair.

Yes and it generally works out really well for the older siblings for their parent to bounce from one relationship to another.

The new bf practically moved in within weeks. It was a shitty thing to do.

Your sister is upset that her daughter wants nothing to do with her. That's fine, very normal reaction. However a good mother would want the best for her daughter no matter what difficulties existed in their mother-daughter relationship. It is in your niece's best interests to maintain as many positive family relationships as possible. Your relationship with your niece is a positive factor in her life. A good mother would want that to continue. Your sister however is envious of your relationship and that envy is causing her to want to cause harm to her daughter by isolating her from family. Your sister lacks emotional intelligence.

What is disgusting? 🤷🏼‍♀️

Saying a half or step sibling isn't a proper sibling

I would also want to check that nothing inappropriate happened to your niece while the new partner was living there with her. Some kids bottle this stuff up & it gets expressed in different ways.

I think you should let her stay. She’s family, fits in well with your home life, is respectful, earns her own money. You’re the family she has left in life.

Agree with this.

The niece and baby aren’t going to be siblings. They aren’t going to grow up together. They will have no shared experiences.

Very good post.

No he didn’t. He moved in 3 years ago and they were together 15 months before that. It was the first man the mother introduced to DD despite having had other secret relationships.

She fell for this man hard, he fell hard too and he paid for IVF.

Maybe mam deserves love too.

I don’t agree with her not cutting out special time to spend with DD, taken on an extra job to save for her uni but finding a loving relationship is not the problem.

Nor do I agree with moving a new partner in within a year or 3 years from leaving the previous relationship. This lady stayed single for 9 years.