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Conflicts with in-laws happen often. After all, you’ve chosen your spouse, not the family that they come with. Apparently, three out of four people experience trouble with their in-laws. This woman got into an argument with both her mother-in-law and sister-in-law.
The SIL wanted the woman to babysit her children. What’s the big deal, you say? Well, it was the woman’s wedding day. When the SIL and the MIL ganged up on the bride-to-be, she turned to the Internet to ask for advice. Was she being selfish for refusing to help, or was she right to not have to do childcare on her big day?
RELATED:
It can be hard to find someone to look after kids during a wedding
Image credits: Alexander Mass / pexels (not the actual photo)
But this woman had the audacity to ask the bride to babysit her multiple kids during her wedding weekend
Image credits: Kampus Production / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Maryia Plashchynskaya / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image credits: This-Candy5592
Many people nowadays opt to hire babysitters during weddings
The author doesn’t specify explicitly, but it seems that her wedding does include kids. She mentions how she didn’t want the SIL to feel excluded since her own sister’s children were invited as well. However, since the SIL has seven of them, the family might consider hiring a babysitter for the wedding.
In fact, many newlyweds and parents attending weddings are choosing to do so. Thomas Waters, owner and event planner at The Renaissance, told The Knot how important it is for newlyweds to offer this service to parents when the wedding is happening out of town, like the destination wedding in this case.
Wedding babysitters can be a godsend to the other parents as well, not just the MIL and the SIL in this story. Granted, the cost of the wedding babysitter depends on the number of children, the geographical location, and the ages of the kids. On average, according to The Knot, parents should expect to pay $20-$40 an hour. Still, wedding planning experts advise many newlyweds to consider this option.
Destination Sitters, one of the companies that offer wedding babysitters, writes that their sitters can come to either the venue or a hotel. “Our wedding babysitters come prepared with toys and age-appropriate activities to create a separate fun zone for kids so that their parents can enjoy your wedding events with peace of mind that their children are being well cared for.”
Although it would come with an extra cost for the bride and groom, a wedding babysitter might really help this situation. Then neither the MIL nor the bride would have to look after the kids and all the adults could enjoy the wedding festivities.
Image credits: cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)
Telling a parent their child’s behavior is unacceptable is hard, but necessary
The author writes how one of her main gripes with this situation is that the kids she’s supposed to babysit “behave poorly.” She claims that her sister-in-law “does not discipline or hold her children accountable, signaling that the two women have different views on parenting.
In reality, it’s quite common to disagree with how someone disciplines (or doesn’t) their kids. Everyone has their own parenting style, so we can just choose to ignore or steer clear of those with whom we disagree.
However, when that parent is a family member, the situation turns more delicate. Etiquette coach and lifestyle expert Lisa Gaché recommends giving the parent the benefit of the doubt first. Perhaps the mother is struggling with so many kids in the house she’s not able to give them all the attention and discipline they need. Maybe she’s burnt out and needs someone to talk to.
Second, Gaché writes, is accepting you can’t control other children. And more so their parents. So, the best course of action is to spend as little time as possible with those family members, as the author seemingly already did.
Gaché says it’s best to be straightforward with family members and not sugarcoat it. “With family, you should not have to stand on ceremony or make up excuses. A calm, straightforward conversation might do the trick and even bring everyone a little closer in the end,” she writes.
Image credits: Gustavo Fring / pexels (not the actual photo)
The bride later added an update about what her fiancée decided to do
Most people agreed the bride is not the jerk here; it’s strange to expect a person to babysit your kids on their wedding day
And some even asked why she invited this family at all
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What do you think ?
The Phantom Stranger 3 months ago
What The Actual F**k? I come to BP expecting to find idiocy, but asking the bride-to-be to babysit on the day of her own wedding is clueless entitlement on a COSMIC scale! This may be the single dumbest thing I've ever read on this forum, which is a very, very high bar. I can see from the original Reddit comments that this post is actually over two years old, so I really hope we can get a follow up to see what kind of havoc these little monsters may have caused, or if SIL & MIL's entitlement ended up getting them disinvited.
Magpie 3 months ago
It's also very likely (non)creative writing b******t. The sheer number of people getting married having entitled SILs and MILs demand they do crazy s**t during their weddings, which nearly always involves out-of-control feral children, and then get called names and abused is either worrying (still marries into a red flag family) or unoriginal fiction. I'm surprised this didn't include the ubiquitous spineless partner who says it's not a big deal, that they should absolutely take the kids for several days, including their wedding day, because SIL is so tired and overwhelmed and needs a break. I'm also surprised that there isn't a spoiled, violent, nonverbal autistic child who breaks her kids' toys, or several since SIL has seven kids. The AITA sub is not really fun to read anymore thanks to all the fake stories. Someone even started an "Am I The Angel" sub where all the stories are over the top, audacious, and intentionally fake to mock AITA being taken over by BS stories.
Load More Replies...
Jason K 3 months ago
I'm going to use this as an opportunity to grind my own axe: there are a lot of so called professionals who would diagnose one, two, maybe alll of those children as ADHD. So many kids who are diagnosed with ADHD these days do not have ADHD, their parents have never set and maintained appropriate boundaries. They behave however they want because there never have been any repercussions. They can do whatever they want because there never have been consequences. They don't have ADHD, they don't know what acceptable behavior is. That's all I'm going to say on this, thanks for coming to my TEDTalk. I had too much scotch tonight.
sturmwesen 3 months ago (edited)
In all fairness we don't KNOW in this case. Generally there are a lot kids that would qualify for ADHD but are not treated and the ones that don'thave it but are put on treatment regardless. But if you have it or not you need parenting and borders.
Load More Replies...
Binky Melnik 2 months ago
But of course! People don’t ever do stupid things, so it’s obviously very fake. (I wanna live in your fantasy world but I can’t as I’ve met far, FAR too many stupid people. The fact that the Kardashians are Uber-famous is because their fans are brilliant and not stupid, right?) 🙄🙄🙄 (Ack! I just pulled muscles in my eyeballs!)
Load More Replies...
The Phantom Stranger 3 months ago
What The Actual F**k? I come to BP expecting to find idiocy, but asking the bride-to-be to babysit on the day of her own wedding is clueless entitlement on a COSMIC scale! This may be the single dumbest thing I've ever read on this forum, which is a very, very high bar. I can see from the original Reddit comments that this post is actually over two years old, so I really hope we can get a follow up to see what kind of havoc these little monsters may have caused, or if SIL & MIL's entitlement ended up getting them disinvited.
Magpie 3 months ago
It's also very likely (non)creative writing b******t. The sheer number of people getting married having entitled SILs and MILs demand they do crazy s**t during their weddings, which nearly always involves out-of-control feral children, and then get called names and abused is either worrying (still marries into a red flag family) or unoriginal fiction. I'm surprised this didn't include the ubiquitous spineless partner who says it's not a big deal, that they should absolutely take the kids for several days, including their wedding day, because SIL is so tired and overwhelmed and needs a break. I'm also surprised that there isn't a spoiled, violent, nonverbal autistic child who breaks her kids' toys, or several since SIL has seven kids. The AITA sub is not really fun to read anymore thanks to all the fake stories. Someone even started an "Am I The Angel" sub where all the stories are over the top, audacious, and intentionally fake to mock AITA being taken over by BS stories.
Load More Replies... Jason K 3 months ago
I'm going to use this as an opportunity to grind my own axe: there are a lot of so called professionals who would diagnose one, two, maybe alll of those children as ADHD. So many kids who are diagnosed with ADHD these days do not have ADHD, their parents have never set and maintained appropriate boundaries. They behave however they want because there never have been any repercussions. They can do whatever they want because there never have been consequences. They don't have ADHD, they don't know what acceptable behavior is. That's all I'm going to say on this, thanks for coming to my TEDTalk. I had too much scotch tonight.
sturmwesen 3 months ago (edited)
In all fairness we don't KNOW in this case. Generally there are a lot kids that would qualify for ADHD but are not treated and the ones that don'thave it but are put on treatment regardless. But if you have it or not you need parenting and borders.
Load More Replies... Binky Melnik 2 months ago
But of course! People don’t ever do stupid things, so it’s obviously very fake. (I wanna live in your fantasy world but I can’t as I’ve met far, FAR too many stupid people. The fact that the Kardashians are Uber-famous is because their fans are brilliant and not stupid, right?) 🙄🙄🙄 (Ack! I just pulled muscles in my eyeballs!)
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