Rubbish holiday guest

[Purtyburty]

I would like some perspective on a holiday I had in France a couple of weeks ago. DH and I are really upset and disappointed with how this holiday went down and I am struggling moving forward with some family relationships. A family group spent a week in a holiday home and my brother’s family were a part of it. He has two children. An 8 year old girl and 4 year old boy. We have a 5 year old DS and a 2 year old DD. From the first day the 4 year old boy targeted my DD. We bought a her a couple of new toys for the holiday including pool toys. Everything she touched or held was immediately snatched from her. She would cry about this but we asked politely to give it back. It’s too hard to explain the whole week so I will just list the behaviour that happened - he hit her several times a day, spat at her, spat in her food, pulled faces at her, pressed his forehead against hers while pulling faces several times a day, he would give her toys then quickly snatch them away, run off with them and then dangle them in front of her and say she can’t have them, threw all her toys in the pool, held her nostrils together tightly and I had to pull his fingers off her nose, push to sit next to her at every meal and shout in her face constantly as she was eating, take her food off her and throw it on the floor etc etc etc. One time he took her toy off her and just licked it constantly in front of her while she cried and just kept smiling and licking it which i just thought was plain weird. We were increasingly frustrated as her parents and I mentioned it to my brother a couple of times and he would laugh about as though oh boys are a lot. My brother and his wife never reprimanded any behaviour of this at all and kept saying it’s because he wants to play and he is only four so he doesn’t understand. But to be honest I felt like she was bullied for a week. By day 3 she would scream in any communal area and wouldn’t go around the pool or anywhere he was so we spent a lot of time indoors on our own or in our room separated. DH still took our eldest in the pool and spent time with him so that his holiday wasn’t ruined so that’s what he was doing most of the time, whilst also trying to help with us. I ended up snapping a couple of times because it all got so overwhelming when we were trying to have a lunch together and after that they told him to stop doing some of the things he was doing but he never listened to them and they never took it further and would just walk away. I wish this was all an exaggeration but it wasn’t - and I supppse i am wondering if this is sometimes normal 4 year old behaviour despite the lack of parenting. I just still feel very upset about how aful the holiday was and very sorry for my child who had to endure it. My brother has sent a few messages since the holiday and I am just finding it really hard to move forward with the relationship. What does anyone think? AiBU?

Good grief. List it all out, every incident. Write an explanation of how, when your children ever even try to behave like that they get corrected, which is WHY they rarely if ever do it. Then send the whole thing to every adult who was on that holiday, with a message that if your brother doesn’t start taking responsibility for parenting his son a) you won’t be letting yours anywhere near him and b) he will have no friends when he gets to school because no one likes a bully. He’s doing his kid no favours by letting him behave like this.

It’s up to you also to control the child and go apeshit at your brother and his wife at the time

just saying “don’t “ to a child who hasn’t been brought up to respect that is pointless. What happens if he ignored you? Nothing ? So why should he listen ?

YABU for putting up with this shit for a week!

I would have made myself very clear on day 2 and then intervened/reprimanded him every single time. Still stressful I know but at least I'd be doing something!

A friends son took a similar dislike to my (same age) daughter 30 years ago, I remember not letting her out of my sight when he was around, and intercepting any of his nasty moves. He would take great offence at this and cry furiously, but it made no difference - I wasn’t going to let him terrorise my daughter.

I’m sorry this happened to you too. If it’s any consolation, it subsided in awfulness over the years, but he needed watching for a while.

Pretty unhelpful of his parents, to take umbrage when you’re physically separating the children. Are they acting as if it was a lovely holiday for all, now? I think I would have had to have had an explicit conversation with them, trying to keep it calm, when the children were in bed.

What were bedtimes like btw? My DC had a cousin who delighted in fidgeting them awake when they were asleep - I had to sit in the doorway like a concierge, until he finally dropped off through boredom, which he didn’t like at all!

I can’t believe how soft you are. You need to learn to actually stick up for your child, not repeatedly allow someone to bully her.

How could you have watched it happen again and again?

I don’t understand why you stayed? Or why you didn’t confront your brother about his child’s behaviour. If a child was doing that to mine, I would first have told my brother to sort his child out. And when he didn’t I’d have packed my kids up and left having found a hotel or Air BnB to go to instead.

That’s all good but what did you do when he spat at your child and in her food? “That’s not kind”?

Just to add, my nephew was a fucking prick at this age- he got told a lot to use gentle hands/kind words etc- he’s now a young adult and despite the crappy non parenting he received he’s a really nice bloke. I’m dead proud of him. But that’s after literally years of him going toe to toe with me when I would bollock him for his bad behaviour and fall out with his mother. I’m actually a really nice aunty believe it or not. Just don’t come for my kids and we can be besties.

Yeah when we went away with pils we had issues like this with one of sils children.

in all honesty we just saw them less. No holidays together, and we invited pils to us or to meet up for the day half way.

other cousins did the same.

If kids are allowed to act like this, they will. You should have told his parents to look after their child (ok, they shouldn't need telling, but since they did) and left after the second incident.
Warn anyone thinking of using the same school as this boy is going to. If you kid goes there, find another.

I've had this exact same situation, with my brother and sil.

Nephew was a little shit, to put it bluntly. They did nothing. Never said, stop, never intervened, never told off. Ever.

So frustrating and basically inept parenting.

Absolutely this.

You list SO MANY incidents - why on earth was there so many??

Particularly at meal times; your brother must have been there, literally a few feet away and you didn’t call him out immediately every single time about his son? Why not??

Your daughter is tiny, she needs you to advocate for her. Not let incident after incident happen to her on your watch.

I am honestly a bit confused about why most people are saying I didn’t advocate or say anything or let it happen when I have repeatedly said that we didn’t intervene we did tell him off, we did pick her up we did take her toys back and we did say something to my brother and ended up snapping at them several times about our feelings on it and pointing out to them what he was doing. But none of this stopped any of his attempts to behave this way. We will never go to their house. We are never allowing our daughter to endure a second longer of being in the same room as him probably ever again.

i am asking of if I am right to believe that this just isn’t normal as his parents tried to lead us to believe.

That's a big fat no more holidays and give your brother and his little shit of a kid a wide berth.

No need to explain why. I expect you won't be the only people who don't want to spend time with them.

*did intervene

obviously

When a kid is spitting in your daughter's food repeatedly, "that's not kind" doesn't cut it.

I have a child that can behave like that. In our case, this is down to anxiety (new place, strange everything, not understanding etc etc).
However, this is the explanation not the excuse. My child is very much parented , re-directed and removed from such situations. This also leads to family drama. Frankly, we just avoid them all now. Holidays just our immediate family of 4 are much calmer and less stressful

i suppose you sound like you were a bit wet tbh

i wouldn’t nuke your whole relationship with your brother. Your nephew is going to grow up and he will change. I would just tell your brother you didn’t appreciate the lack of parenting and you think it would be better to keep the children apart for now

I think that you should move forward by having some space from them so don’t meet up for a while. When you do, be consistent with your parenting and pull up the undesirable behaviour every time and talk to his parents. Narrate what is going on, loudly enough for his parents to hear. Be prepared to leave if your daughter is being targeted and state your reasons.
It is hard, especially when it is family. I detest negative behaviour being permitted by young boys because of poor parenting under the guise of boys will be boys. It does the child no favours at all. You have done nothing wrong in your approach. Sounds bloody exhausting!
You can only do so much when such parents allow this kind of behaviour and inevitably it will end up with less contact.
They might have a wake up call when he starts school (and just wait for their excuses for his behaviour after their many meetings with his teacher).

So you needed to speak to your brother. Clearly he is not used to being told off or sharing space.

You are right the behaviour isn’t normal. I would avoid as you are doing and be open and honest about the reasons why. Unfortunately these types of parents then moan about how their child gets left out of things because they haven’t parented properly.

I'd go and book another break, you must all be traumatised. Not normal AT ALL. Horrible behaviour from him and his parents. I'd struggle to be nice to them aswell. Avoid kid meet ups if you can for a while.

I didn’t say that’s not kind to that. I went to town. Infront of his sibling and they both took a step back. I told my brother and he said he just blows rasberries and my dad said no he spat so he said he would say something to him.
And yet again for the people who want to ask why he was next to her at this time. We ate separately for breakfast and he entered the room and ran straight over and did it.

Can we not all just decide what was said in every specific situation without being there?!

No it's not normal behaviour. This is a child that isn't being parented and is a brat. Sorry your dd had to go through this.

Get some self defence classes for your DD then she can give him a good wallop. He will soon stop

Me too. There’s no way I’d have put up with this behaviour after the first couple of times saying “kind hands”, “don’t snatch” etc. He’d have been moved to the other side if the table if he’d tried to sandwich himself in as well and first words would have been had with his parents.

If he’d spat in my children’s food if his parents hadn’t removed him I would have, that’s revolting.