Niece's behaviour ruining relationship with SIL - your advice please

[CrushedRaspberryDungarees]

I have a lovely 3 year old niece. Me and my 3 dc (7, 5 and 2) spend time with her and my SIL quite often. The problem is that the way we discipline our children is so different that it is starting to ruin our time together.

Basically I am of the belief that ultimately what I say goes and my SIL lets DN do/have whatever she wants to keep the peace.

Today's example (almost comedy in retrospect):

DN and SIL were at our house. DN spies a packet of biscuits on the kitchen shelf and starts climbing up on a chair to get them. SIL says she needs to ask if she wants a biscuit. DN makes a grab for the biscuits. I move the biscuits and ask DN if she would like one. DN fixes me with a stare and does not answer. My own 3 dc come and ask nicely for a biscuit. I give them one and they all say thankyou. SIL asks me to just to give DN a biscuit. I take one out for her and SIL tells her to say thankyou. She says nothing and tries to take the biscuit out of my hand. There follows a comedy scene of me holding onto the biscuit and DN managing to get little bits off me and eat them. Everyone was staring at me and I was trying to decide whether to let go or not. I used to hold onto things with my dc until they said thankyou, because I want it to become automatic for them to say it, which it is now. DN did NOT in the end say thankyou - she managed to prise the bloody biscuit off me and ran off. SIL did nothing.

My SIL is lovely but will do anything to avoid confrontation. Her daughter must not cry under any circumstances. Everything is "No", then "Oh, OK then" as soon as DN starts to whinge a bit.

When DN is with me and SIL is not there, she does what I ask and is a pleasure to be with. When her mum is there she becomes a whiney manipulative little monster!

What I want to know is, should I have interfered and held onto the biscuit or not? I know I can't give SIL advice without her asking for it, but if my own dc are witnessing me treating DN differently what message does that give them? I also feel myself getting wound up by it and think it's only going to get worse as time goes on.

Don't know why she destroyed the sandcastle but the point was that SIL didn't say anything even though my ds was really upset. My dc do things too. I'm not expecting perfection obviously. It was the fact that there was no consequence/explanation - nothing.

In the past SIL has used the excuse that my dc are older and can therefore wait for treats etc, but now DN is getting old enough to understand these things. Also my youngest is 2 and is now getting a lot more of the same treatment as the oder 2! She gets more leeway but can understand simple consequences now.

The problem I have is that SIL is so inconsistent and my dc are starting to notice this. Even in small ways - yesterday we were at their house for dinner and SIL asked me to take all the kids into the garden so she could cook, and this was explained to all of them. No problem. After about 2 minutes of playing with us DN wants to go in. I explained the situation but aside from physically stopping her there was nothing I could do. When I looked through the window DN is sitting there eating biscuits. I was trying to do what she asked but my dc had to stay outside while she let DN come back!

I think different people have different ways of looking at this - I saw my SIL holding on to a biscuit once when ds was a toddler and saying to him "TAAAAAA" - like training a dog.

i preferred to do it another way, by not actively training him but by just thanking him when he passed me things, making sure DH and I thanked eachother, and also thanking people on DS' behalf.

Both approaches get there in the end I'm sure.

but yes, your SIL sounds annoyingly inconsistent and ineffecutal. However I honestly think it's not worth worrying about - your kids won't be unduly influenced by it because they do HAVE consistency.

but yes, your SIL sounds annoyingly inconsistent and ineffecutal. However I honestly think it's not worth worrying about - your kids won't be unduly influenced by it because they do HAVE consistency.

sorry about the double post - bloody cat landed on the keyboard

thanks, honoria.

It bothers me on my dc's behalf that it's so unfair on them.

And DN is quite capable of saying thankyou - otherwise I wouldn't expect her to and SIL had told her to anyway. I expect there are times when my dc don't say it when I give them something but my point is that if you ask them to then that's what you want them to do, same with anything you ask them to do. They never try to get DN to do anything she doesn't want to do, even little things like putting rubbish in the bin. They ask her to, she says no, so they do it. Even my 2 year old knows where rubbish goes - in fact she likes putting things in the bin so much we have to watch what else goes in! I have had a few comments from my eldest about why she and her siblings have to do a,b and c but DN doesn't have to.

I have been thinking about the biscuit thing (as you do...) and I think its appropriate to expect a child to ask nicely for something rather than just whine/make a grab (whether or not this includes saying please) and not give them the biscuit/whatever if they are just whining, but personally, I don't say thank you until I have actually received the cup of tea/biscuit and I wouldn't expect a child to either. On the other hand, as I said before if I was at somebody's house and they clearly expected a thank you, I would certainly prompt DS to say thank you/utter so many thank you's on his behalf that the host was confused into thinking that he had said thank you.

I think in some ways it is more your SIL than your niece that is being impolite. As far as I know this is the required protocol re: sandcastles.

Child A knocks over Child B's sandcastle.

Parent of Child A: Oh I'm so sorry, look what you have done! Please say sorry to Child B, Oh I am so sorry Child B!, you wouldn't like it if Child B knocked over your sandcastle would you Child A? etc. etc for about 3 minutes.

Parent of Child B: [At some point interrupting Parent of Child A.] Oh no, don't worry about it, Child A was just over excited, lets start building another one, come on Child B, you knocked over Child C's sandcastle last week! we'll just have to build a better sandcastle, Child A didn't mean it etc. etc. until Child A and Child B wander off and do something else.

Despite Parent of Child B's protests, he/she would be quite miffed if Parent of Child A started out by saying "Oh Child A is just being overexcited, kids hey!".

Young children aren't always capable of understanding that another child is upset, but adults are.

The idea that children somehow reach a stage where they can wait for treats and that until then they need to be given biscuits whenever they ask is clearly barking.

MadamePlatypus, I would have been quite happy with the outcome of your sandcastle scenario - I think that's the way most people would handle it.

Of course it's not my niece's fault. She's never been shown any different.

I don't want to make my SIL feel bad but DO want to stand up for my dc. They always seem to have to give dn what she wants. She will be busy playing with something, sees my dd (who is smaller) go for the ball, grabs it off her, dd tries to get it back but is not as strong as her cousin, SIL says "Oh, dn, dd was about to play with that." Normal toddler behaviour but no attempt to get her to give the ball back.

I could go on but will refrain.

I can totally sympathise. For a long time, my sister was very lax when it came to discipling her DS1 (now 3). It was as if she just did anything for an easy life, eg, told him not to do something, but if he started moaning too much, she'd give in cos she couldn't deal with the hassle. His resulting bad behaviour was terrible. A few times we nearly fell out big time. Once, he was sitting right next to my DS at a sandpit, and he just picked up a metal spade and went to throw it straight at my DS's face (for no reason at all other than he just felt like it). If my sis hadn't been there and anticipated it and acted quickly to catch his wrist in her hand, my son would have ended up in A&E. The whole trying to throw the spade thing pissed me off, but I know that LOs do these sorts of things sometimes so gritted my teeth. What nearly caused me to walk out was the reaction of my sister - instead of a severe reprimanding, an explanation of why it was dangerous, and removing him from the situation, she just said in this really lame, soft voice, "Oh DS, that was very naughty", and let him carry on playing.

That, and other situations, made me SO MAD!! Anyway, it came back to bite her on the bum when she had her second child, as my nephew was awful towards her for a long time. Quite violent and really badly-behaved. She recently admitted that she'd been too lax with him in the past and was trying to clamp down on bad behaviour. I have seen she's been making more of an effort and the result in my nephew has been great. He is much more pleasant to be around, and he seems happier too, and other kids want to play with him more (before they tended to get as pissed off with him as I did LOL).

To be honest, some parents are just lazy when it comes to discipline. It takes a bit of effort and some just can't be bothered and will take the easy way out, even if it means they make it worse for themselves in the long term. My second child is naturally very difficult and has literally turned me grey with the stress and effort of trying daily to stop him turning into a devil child! He tries to get away with EVERYTHING. It is bloody hard work with him, but I know that, as exhausting as it is now, it will be worth it in the end to have a pleasant and well-behaved child.

Sounds like your SIL just can't see what she's doing or doesn't WANT to make the effort to do things better. When your neice starts having problems with no-one wanting to play with her cos she's a brat, then your SIL will probably sit up and take notice, but until that point, there's not much you can do.

I have a similar situation and would appreciate your advice. My DSister and I have 4 boys between us. DN's are 21 & 10. DSs are 9 & 8. For the last year they have not enjoyed one another?s company, which happens, but it just seems to be getting worse.

On Sunday we visited, to watch DN in a swimming gala, he refused to talk to my DSs. When we returned to their house DN wouldn?t let them play with his toys, wouldn?t let them in his room. Which you may feel is his decision, but we travelled for over 1.5hrs to get there for DSs to then sit and watch TV (DN choice of channel). My DSister said "what can I say, I have a horrible child".

My DS had asked to borrow a CD from the older DN and he said no problem. Younger DN hid it, swore he hadn?t and then DSister said if you return it you can go to bed at whatever time you want. The CD was promptly returned.

DSister has had lots of issues with DNs friends, lots of upsets, fallings out, my DSister phoned 2 parents in last half term to complain that their children were being nasty to him, turned out it was the other way round. Last week was sports day and DSister didn?t send him to school that day as he doesn?t like losing.

My DH and I include him in all our activities, have him on day trips with us, overnight stays and even holidays. All of which he is keen to attend and very well behaved for.

I am unsure of how to deal with this, it isn?t pleasant spending time together, I am getting to the point where I think I am making my children spend time where they are not happy and I don?t want them to feel that I am ignoring someone being so mean to them, which is what I am doing.

I love my DSister so much and I very much want our families to spend time together. I worry that whatever I say will cause a family rift.