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.

I haven’t read anything else on here but from your initial post I wonder if there’s something she isn’t saying about her mums partner? She clearly doesn’t like him and isn’t happy the dynamics have changed. If your niece is a nice girl and helps around house etc, I’d definitely let her stay and ensure she’s happy and knows she’s welcome and tell your sister you’re keeping her safe. She may open up more to you once she knows you’re on her side.

Your niece actually sounds quite reasonable and measured in her response.

Maybe not to you or others but the op felt it relevant enough to add in that the mum in the nieces eyes never had time for her to state why the niece doesn't speak to her mum. I did also say that the sister SHOULDN'T be telling her not to have her niece there though regardless

Disagree, she is saying "I've gone no contact with my mum and her partner, can I stay at yours over the summer instead". Which is fine, but saying okay is actively becoming part of the drama.

Yup. A normal, caring mother doesn't try to spitefully punish her own child by denying them a safe adult relative's care, just because her daughter has reacted in a way anybody could have foreseen to feeling ignored and supplanted.

The sister sounds vicious and selfish. She's trying to punish and force her daughter into compliance.

It's that sort of self centred crap that has caused the estrangement. If OP was daft enough to comply with her sister's high handed demands her niece might permanently end the relationship with her mother.

OPs sister is a clueless, selfish fool. She can't control her daughter and could easily lose her altogether.

Time she realised that.

I am team niece on this one, and think you are doing the right thing by having her stay with you from time to time. Not just because you have no quarrel with each other.

My opinion, coming from a divorced family that my dad had another kids 11 years later, is just give her time. And also it s very important for you to keep welcoming her back and allowing her to stay with you if she wants. Don’t cut her out!

There is a certain irony to this post

the emotions from the poster show right through her words, she allows herself, quite rightly, to feel mistreated by the adult child’s shitty behaviour but does not have even a dribble of understanding or empathy for the 19 years olds experience and perspective of what it was like for them when she arrived on the scene and the impact that had on the relationship with their father.

This is the root cause of most relationship difficulties where people cannot recognise that most situations have multiple truths and perspectives and if you cannot remotely put yourself into the perspective of the other person’s experience and only are capable of seeing things from your own perspective it is very difficult to have a decent relationship.

That same situation played out with the OP’s sister. She ignored her daughter’s perspective and experience completely.

Her daughter might not be great at considering her mother’s perspective but being honest in a parent child relationship that flows more in one direction than in other relationship types as parents are responsible for their children.

Honestly though her mother trying to cut off access to support from her aunt tells a lot in this situation too.

Niece needs somewhere safe to spend the summer. You have the space and have offered.

Your sister can't control her dd, who is 20, an adult and responsible for her own decisions.

Your sister should thank you for providing a place of safety.

Your sister doesn't come across as prioritising your niece's well being at all here, so I can well believe she hasn't prioritised her in the past either. As others have pointed out, she should be glad that her daughter is in a safe place with the wider family. Trying to force two adults, OP and her niece, not to spend time together in OP's home is unreasonably controlling.

It seems that your sister is angry that your niece is refusing to fall in with the happy blended family image she wants to project, with niece being a doting big sister/extra pair of hands/babysitter, and taking on the chin being marginalised in her own home. Your niece has the temerity to have her own feelings about this new family set up.

WHY women settle for men with strained relationships that they are often the cause of boggles my mind. Too late for you, but others reading, please pick better men, ones without kids, to have your children with.

I to have a similar situation in my family, except it’s my nephew. My sister had him when she was 19 and for years he was the only child and grew up with my girls (they are similar ages) so have a sibling relationship with them. I know that my sister did date and have a couple of relationships while he was growing up, which is fine, but when he was 15 she met her now husband and decided to move him in despite the fact that my nephew didn’t like him (with good reason as the new man bullied and belittled my nephew). My sister didn’t believe her son when he said what was happening and so he decided to go and live with his grandparents (our parents). My sister still refused to see anything from his point of view ans refused to see him alone without the new man, who by then was her husband, so my nephew cut off all contact and lived with my parents until he went to university. My sister then had another two children who my nephew has refused to meet and doesn’t even acknowledge on the rare occasion they are together at a family event. My parents tried to reason with her ans say that she is cutting off her eldest son but she never listened. She blames me and our parents for taking his side and nit forcing him home or forcing a relationship with the younger kids. She is also furious with me and my daughters because we too aren’t interested in spending time with kids who are young, badly behaved and annoying. So she’s now cut off all contact with us. My nephew is now living with us because he has a job near where we live and the three of them are so close and my two definitely are more his sisters than the much younger kids. The age gap does matter, there’s no way a 19/20 year old wants a relationship with a sibling 19/20 years younger.

You are saying that OP should be judging whether her niece can stay based on whether the reason is good enough.

I think she should be letting her niece stay based on whether OP wants her to or not. Not assessing whether she thinks her niece should go and stay with her mum if she doesn't want to stay in her univeristy town.

If OP makes a judgement based decision then she is picking sides.

Yes, the mother's response is vindictive and actually dreadful. Trying to punish the daughter into compliance rather than allowing her a safe haven with a loving, safe relative. She'd rather make her daughter feel even more unsafe, unsupported and unloved than lose power.

That's not what love looks like. And I'm afraid she'll just have to pay for babysitters.

If Ops sister keeps this up she's liable to lose her daughter forever.

I'm so glad you protected and welcomed your nephew. You're a good mum, and a wonderful aunt.

My sister is usually very sensible. Shes a very high achiever and always made good decisions. She split with my nieces dad when my niece was 7 and although she dated, she didn’t introduce anyone to my niece

So she stayed a single parent / maybe co parented with the father for 10 years, a decade of putting her child first and she waited until her daughter was 17 to have a new relationship. And your daughter thinks her mum is selfish for that?

What an absolute spoilt brat. Those 10 years wouldn't of been easy for your sister.

Your part of the problem, being a back and forth telling your sister snippets of what's been said, but not telling your niece she's being unreasonable, agreeing with your neice. It sounds like your enjoying this tbh but using concern / sympathy to look like your not.

Is there any chance at all that your sister's partner was inappropriate with your niece? It might have just been a remark or two or a lascivious look?

This could explain her attitude. She might not want to tell anyone in case she is not believed.

You are absolutely doing the right thing. She needs a safe place to be, and your sister hasn’t created that for her.
It can be hard for people to see the consequences of their actions…and it’s not your job to make her feel better about that.

Support your niece. You are simply offering her a place to stay, which is lovely. When I was her age, my mum also met a new partner. She was well past the age of having babies, but she trashed her whole life and every relationship in it for this loser of a man with a serious criminal record (sexual offences). I cannot tell you how much it’s meant to me that women in my life stepped up and gave me a place to land.

Nah. Her daughter responded normally to a strange man being forced into her life when she was 16. A chimpanzee could have predicted her response.

She'd have come round eventually if her mother wasn't trying to vindictively punish her into compliance, strip her daughter of a safe, reliable relative's care, and ram a baby she's not interested in down her gullet.

The mother's an idiot. She can't win a battle of power because she's lost her power over her daughter now. She's headed the right way to lose her daughter forever.

She should shut her trap, get updates from her sister, and drop by to see her daughter alone with no baby or man in tow from time to time.

Instead, she'll almost certainly keep issuing commands and lose her daughter altogether.

Oh well, at least the niece has a safe haven with her aunt.

It's certainly very possible. But her attitude to having a strange man forced into her home, aged 16, is also standard and could easily have been predicted.

It doesn't sound as though she has put the niece first or considered her feelings at all that's the problem, She met this man when her daughter was 15 and started letting him stay over more or less immediately at the same time she stopped doing activities with her daughter at a time when she probably needed her mother the most. She didn't go anywhere with her daughter without her partner. That's very odd and upsetting for a teenage girl.
And then she told her she can't support her through University. Student loans are based on household income , presumably the sister has a household income that should provide some support as they can afford IVF and a new baby.
The niece has obviously been sidelined for her mother's new family and she has been shown she is second best. It's not surprising that the niece doesn't want to continue a relationship with her mother it sounds as though she hasn't had one for years anyway.
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?

They are not a full sibling. A lot of people can pretend to themselves and try and play happy families but it doesn’t always work out for the children involved.

Yanbu, you’re doing exactly what I would do. Your niece is an adult so you don’t need your sister’s agreement for any of your decisions. I also think your sister is being coercive by demanding her daughter must stay with her and so on. I would not try and force the relationship between your niece and her mother. It’s ok to have suggested they try and talk to sort things out, but I would not push it or force it. This is the kind of situation that the niece needs to be older and wiser to begin to understand how/why her mum is starting a second family. It can’t be hot housed with cups of tea and chats. It will take time for the niece to want to build a new adult to adult relationship with her mother. Her mother is unreasonably acting like her adult DD is still a child that she can just tell to do x. Her DD has her own thoughts her own life and until the mother gives her the respect due an adult and the DD is more mature, they aren’t going to bridge the gap.

My mum did this to me twenty years ago completely favoured the man and gave him everything he wanted even though we'd been living in relative poverty and tbh it's been difficult to forgive her. She didn't just favour him in terms of giving him material things. It was also all her time in the world he got and the fact that his voice was heard and mine wasn't. It was a bitter pill to swallow and still chokes me writing this now.