Woman angry sister asked for night off watching kids; says, ‘you pay the babysitter.’
Sisters are your best friends, and your worst friends, it just depends on the day. Throw money, stress, and a growing gap in your life phases into the mix, and there’s bound to be some tense moments.
In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a woman asked if she’s wrong for making her sister pay for a babysitter when she won’t watch the kids.
She wrote:
AITA for making my sister pay for my kids’ babysitter when she won’t watch them?
I (F28) let my sister (20) live with us while she goes to university. In return, she pays us $500 a month. This covers her room, the extra water and power, and her food. I think it’s very fair. She also does chores and helps with the kids. That was our agreement. We wrote everything down so there was no confusion.
My understanding is that room and board at her school is $1,200 a month for shared accommodation. And it is only available during the eight months of school. So living here is $6,000 a year as opposed to $9,600 for eight months and then four months living with our mom and stepdad. All was well for two years. She is a good student and a good kid.
But she has a boyfriend now and she has started complaining about watching the kids every other Saturday night so my husband and I can have a date night. So I told her that I would find a sitter but that she was responsible for paying them since she was supposed to watch the kids. Now she is complaining that with her paying the sitter it is using up all of her disposable income.
She said she may as well stay on campus next year. I agreed and told her that was a great idea. She gets her freedom and I get my hobby room back. My mom called me and said that my sister wasn’t my unpaid nanny. I told her that I had already agreed that she could live on campus next semester.
Then she said I was being a b@#$h because that would increase the amount they are paying for her and that four months away from her job and boyfriend was cruel. I’m kind of torn. We had a deal and I think it was fair. AITA?
People had a lot of thoughts about OP’s family dynamic.
RedditDK2 wrote:
Your mother is right – your sister is not an unpaid nanny. What she doesn’t understand is that she is being paid in subsidized room and board. Having to babysit every other Saturday night is not unreasonable. If your sister worked elsewhere she might have to work evenings and weekends as well. NTA.
No_Scarcity8249 wrote:
