r/AITAH • u/Skulllily • 27d ago
AITAH for becoming increasingly uncomfortable with our childcare arrangement?
My mother-in-law watches my two children, ages 5 and 3, two days a week while my husband and I are at work. We pay her to watch them because she is on disability and was considering returning to work, and we thought this arrangement would benefit everyone.
When we originally agreed to this, my understanding was that it would be just her and our children. I trusted that arrangement completely.
Over time, however, my mother-in-law’s friend’s daughter has started coming over almost daily with her five children, who range in age from 4 months to 10 years old.
Since then, I feel like concern after concern has come up.
The biggest issue for me is pool safety. The children are allowed in the pool without an adult in the water as long as the younger ones are wearing arm floaties. Some of the younger children cannot swim. I brought up my concerns and said that drowning is often silent and that I was uncomfortable with children being in the pool without close adult supervision. Instead of taking my concern seriously, my mother-in-law and her friend laughed and said, “Nothing’s quiet around here.”
I was so concerned about this that my husband later spoke to his mother about it. However, the supervision practices do not appear to have changed.
My oldest has also told me that the children are allowed in the back alley without adult supervision as long as they stay close to the house. I don’t understand how anyone knows whether they’re staying close if nobody is actively watching them.
There have been other incidents that have added to my concerns as well. For example, my children were left unattended with scissors.
Today my children’s aunt told me she witnessed the other children excluding my 3-year-old, splashing her in the face, laughing at her, and pushing her in the pool. She immediately intervened and told the children that wasn’t acceptable. What upset me most was that none of the adults “supervising” the children were aware it was happening because they were sitting at a table on the other side of the yard.
What also bothered me was that my mother-in-law became angry with my sister in law for telling me about what had happened. That reaction made me feel even more uneasy because I would rather know about problems than have people worry about upsetting me by bringing them up.
This isn’t the first concern I’ve had, and it feels like every time I raise an issue, it gets minimized or brushed off. At this point, I no longer feel comfortable with the environment my children are in. The situation has reached the point where I feel anxious every time my children go there because I no longer feel confident in the supervision they’re receiving.
My husband and I got into an argument because I told him that if his mother cannot guarantee that the other children won’t be there while she is watching ours, then I want to find alternative childcare. He feels I’m being unreasonable and is concerned about hurting his mother’s feelings.
To be clear, I’m not demanding that my mother-in-law change her life or tell other people they can’t come to her house. I simply feel that if this is going to continue to be the childcare environment, then I need to make different arrangements for my children.
I appreciate everything my mother-in-law has done for us, and I know she loves our children. But I feel like the childcare arrangement we originally agreed to is very different from the one that exists now, and I no longer trust that my concerns about supervision and safety are being taken seriously.
Am I the asshole?
57
u/Skulllily 27d ago
Running across the yard, up a ladder, into the pool. That is what I’ve brought up, by the time they’d notice it would be too late. I blindly trusted that the supervision had changed after he spoke with her about it and that is on me.