Hello everyone,
I am a parent of a 2.5 year old. I have a sister, with whom things were extremely tense before I became pregnant with my child. My sister and I are completely opposite with regards to Personality. She is very opinionated, brash, and can be very bossy/controlling, while I avoid confrontation and am generally accepting of everyone. We had seemingly gone our separate ways as young adults, as I was just tired of the constant fighting and feeling belittled and abused. Fast forward to three years ago, I had reconnected with my sister at a family event where I shared my pregnancy news. After this, my sister made an effort to call me and make plans. She wasn’t unkind and had even seemed like a completely different person (in a very pleasant way).
This all slowly seemed to change after my child was born. She often made the comment “you only know so much about him because you spend the most time with him. WE are his people.” I did kindly ask her what she meant by this and why she said this, but she never really qualified it. I had to explain that as my child’s mother, I know so much about him because we have a very special and unique bond. These types of comments gave way to my sister doing things in public, such as shoving me out of the way when a group of people would walk by and then taking over pushing my son’s pram, whilst making comments such as “He sure is allergic to sleep.” Or “He sure keeps us busy.” Each time I asked her about her behaviour, she acted like I was from mars and she had no idea what I was talking about.
Most recently, now that my son is a toddler, she met up with us at a local playground. My son was playing in the sandbox with another little girl, whilst the mother of the girl and I were having a conversation about parenting. My sister chimes in, while picking my son up, out of the sand and into her lap, and began speaking overtop of me, answering the questions about my son that the mother had asked of me. This made the other mother quite visibly uncomfortable, so she collected her child and left us. I was embarrassed, angry, and even a little weirded out. I simply said to her that when a mother asks a question about MY son, I don’t need her to answer for me. She just sort of scoffed and decided my son was done playing in the sand, so she picked him up, rushed away from me, and attempted to take him to the slide which was beside the sandbox. He was quite unhappy that his aunt was forcing him out of the sand, and he ran back to me, sobbing and yelling “No, no! Mummy!”. I comforted him, let him play in the sand (despite my sisters’ insistence that he needed to play on the slide and not in the sand). I firmly stated that my son will play where he wishes, and me, his mother, will decided when it’s time to leave. After this, I made a point to bring my son home, without his aunt. I am furious and have not had any contact with my sister in 3 weeks. I feel as though it is time for me to cut her off and out of our life, as I am fearful that this controlling behaviour will only escalate as my son gets older.
Am I being too rash, or would any of you do the same? Any insight would be helpful.
Thank you!