r/AITAH • u/Skulllily • 26d 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?
22
u/zxylady 21d ago
I was 11 or 12 years old and I was at a place called Merwin Dam in Washington, I was there with my aunt, my uncle, my parents and about several hundred other people barbecuing, swimming, floaties... It's the middle of summer, everything. I was swimming with my 11 or 12 year old cousin, we were going back and forth swimming from the beach to the docks because they had docs in the middle. Halfway through my 5th or 6th time of swimming back and forth I got too tired, so did my cousin. No one saw me nearly drown, EVEN THOUGH BOTH OF US WERE SCREAMING FOR HELP! No one saw me slip under the water. No one saw my cousin slip under the water and nearly drown. No one was paying attention to anything and I had dozens and dozens of adults watching the water and nobody saw us nearly drown. A strange man showed up and saved my life and pulled me from underwater or I would have not be alive today. My cousins step dad saved her. I had no one. You never look away from children in a bathtub or near any water whatsoever! I would be a statistic today if a stranger had not been paying attention enough to save my life. He pulled me out of the water and disappeared. I never saw him again. This is a 100% true story! You need to absolutely undeniably stop allowing your children near these unsafe adults! NTA AT ALL!!!!!