AITAH for ignoring my SIL and going zero contact for her and her children – for myself and my children…

Anyone for a cup of drama tea? I got some for ya! I apologize if it’s a long one. Maybe get a snack to get you through it. I apologize if it seems like I jump around a bit. I also want to take a moment to say I love my in-laws so much! I’m so lucky to have them in my life! They’ve helped and loved our kids so much!

So we go on family trips with my in-laws to the beach every year. We often stay right on the waterfront. This leads to our greater family ending up in two or more condos, depending on who is attending. We often end up with my SIL( call her Karen), but this time asked if we could room with my husband’s other sibling. This is because her children, she as well, have often been very aggressive and mean. More on this later. On this occasion, the family decided that we are going to bunk together in a single larger home.

On our way to the rented house as we got ready to leave, Karen wanted one of our kids to switch seats with one of her kids, so she could have a peaceful ride down there. My kids are pretty easy going, often chill goes with the flow. Hers however are very much not. Because our kids have had previous issues and concerning interaction prior, the request to swap seats caused our middle child to go into hysterics, begging my husband to not make them get into the car with Karen or her kids. He told Karen it wasn’t happening and that we were going to head to the beach. As we drove down to the house we found out the reason for the fear. To which we reassured that we would keep them safe and wouldn’t let them get hurt. We found out that they have a fear of one of the younger children and that due to previous physical interactions, there is a strong fear of not wanting to play/interact.

One of the hardest things to handle as a parent when dealing with family is when these times of gatherings or get togethers and your child has a fear of another family members child(ren), you don’t want them to miss out on that family time/play with the other children/family that will be there. So you reassure them that things are going to be OK, and then when inevitably something goes wrong, you fear that your child will one day realize that you didn’t protect them and that you lied all along to encourage them to still visit/interact. This enables the bully child to continue to cause further harm and sometimes feels outside your power to control/change (without just removing yourself from family events).

We get there, and we are kind of scoping out the place, getting stuff brought in. During this family gathering I am injured and need assistance walking/moving around (unfortunately imobile). So we are using the bedroom on the main level with the attached bathroom. We have our three kids. The youngest is co-sleeping with us. The two want to sleep in a bed together with their other cousins in the kids room. We said okay.

We are a family of 4 (parents, 3 children families). Karen is single with her kids there so she is sleeping wherever, which ends up being where there are extra beds. All good. Well we are getting things all situated. Come to the evening as we figure out dinner options, Karen’s daughter comes down the stairs screaming about something. Throwing a tantrum. As Karen is trying to “reason” with her, she tries to push my child (The one with the fear) down about a 15-flight of hardwood stairs from the top of them, out of anger/frustration. My child wasn’t even part of this situation, and was trying to leave the situation as they don’t like being around when someone is being scolded. Unfortunately, the wrong place at the wrong time with this outburst, however, doesn’t feel like it matters.

My mother in law stepped in because Karen wasn’t really handling it. In the process of my MIL handling it she kicked my 1.5 year old. My husband was closer and walked over and picked up our daughter, and my MIL whooped the bully’s butt and made her sit in time out. We made a point to keep my little one away from her after that. Karen tried reasoning she didn’t mean to kick our toddler (who wasn’t doing anything but being curious, as babies do) and that my middle daughter was just fine(essentially excusing the behavior of her daughter).

This isn’t the first time we’ve had issues with Karen’s kids. Mother’s Day the year before her daughter was walking around a community pool and one of the younger cousins was standing next to it and she walked up and shoved her into the deep end. Just shoved her in for no reason. My husband, luckily, was there to reach in and grab her and bring her up to safety as she didn’t know how to swim at the time.

During all of the above going on, she solicits community parenting because she is struggling to manage her kids and their behaviors before being overwhelmed with the stresses of dealing with it. When her daughter has outbursts, she would almost try to run and hide like she couldn’t handle it. But wanted us to deal with it?

We had things we planned to do in the days following. After we came back from our events, the kids were up stairs playing a game on their tablets, and my oldest asked Karen’s daughter to stop jumping on their backs. She persisted jumping on their back, due to her not stopping they kind of tried tossing her off, and asked the older brother if he would get his sister, to which he grabbed the sister by the hair to yank her off. The brother asks a question, which kind of distracts my (oldest), and he then asks if they want to play a game, which they decided to do.

They couldn’t agree on a game to play, so my oldest decided to get up to play a different game, when he grabbed their arm quite hard. After breaking free, gets tripped and falls down, and realizes that it was on purpose. In the attempt to tell the adults what happened, they find themselves with their mouth and nose covered in an attempt to prevent getting in trouble by the older brother. This prevents her from calling out for help. In the next struggle to get free, they kick the offender either in the stomach/chest which allows them to get away.

Visibly upset (tears and all) came downstairs with a red mark on their arm (from the earlier grabbing), and told me what happened. In the frustration of the course of events, I responded to the mother, “Is it my turn?”, wanting to protect my child from what has now become regular physical incidents on this trip. My oldest loves everyone, and dislikes making people feel bad.

Karen goes upstairs to speak with their children to find out what happened from them. Which ended up stating that they never touched my oldest and that they tossed their sister off their back which is why something happened. Then my oldest kicked him for no reason other than when asked to play the game he was wanting to play.

So when Karen came down stairs, to say what he said, I informed her if it happens again I gave her full permission to defend herself by any means necessary. She took that as me saying I told my kids they can haul off and just hit her kids. To which she said oh you wanna hit me, you wanna hit me. At this point in time, being injured and unable to defend myself, my MIL came over and told her to get away from me. I was ready to throttle her.

Not only had she blamed my child for her son’s abuse/physicality, but she then said it wasn’t okay for my child to defend themself? The funniest part(maybe not funniest part) is this happens when my husband isn’t there. He and my father in law weren’t at the rental for a little while. He had no clue what was going on. But my MIL made her and the kids leave.

In the weeks that followed I wanted nothing to do with Karen. She tried calling me but I didn’t have anything kind to say, and I didn’t think it was smart to talk without someone there to either witness it or mediate it. She likes to talk out her ass and I would have just said fuck off and hung up. When we tried calling back, she said she was done trying because I didn’t answer and felt like I should have, on her terms of time to reconcile. After this, I basically wrote her off.

Considering the shit I put up with for the last 15 or so years. We’ve been together longer than that.
— When I wouldn’t do what she wanted me to do, she would pull stupid shit, making comments like she had a friend to set my husband up with on a date, in front of me, his reply was gold, “are you fucking dumb?”
— Her getting mad at me for calling her a bitch. She then threatened to call the police on me to have me removed from the house?
— When I didn’t want to go out to a strip club for my bachelorette party she had a shit fit and almost lost the ability to go to our wedding.
— Before I got pregnant she said didn’t want her tax dollars to go to take care of my kid, though we made enough money to take care of our kids? she didn’t even live in the same state…

Then the texts came to my husband. He didn’t take the bait of course. He kept telling her, in a roundabout way to keep it up, all she was doing was hurting their relationship, yet she kept going. Even trying to bring my family into it, and bringing up things she actually had zero clue about. Making herself look dumb. The saying that those that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones comes to mind here. It ended up hurting my FIL a lot as well. Which really irritates me too. I love him and my MIL like they’re my own parents. I don’t want to talk to her. She hasn’t apologized to my husband or my kids. I can live with not getting one, but my kids are the ones who really deserve one. She also refuses to take any blame. I accepted the blame I had in it. The comedic part in it is we do things separate from her for family things. Taking parents to dinner for their birthday, that sort of thing. A video was seen and she got mad because she wasn’t invited ….🤔.

Her life is a mess and she claims none of us have done anything to help her. Ironic considering we’ve offered to help her with many things. When she and her husband split up, which was quite bad, we offered to help however we could. Moving her, helping her get her things etc. ignored. We hyped her up, we never spoke negatively about her to her kids. She ended up going back to her husband. It hasn’t gone well so far. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. We try to avoid my children having any interaction with hers because they can’t be trusted.

My middle goes into what seems to mimic an anxiety attack? She says her heart races and she gets shaky thinking about having to be around them. 😡🤬

She went and told the rest of the family her version. With the more people she told it only got more theatrical. No one asked us to explain anything. My husband said that meant they knew her story was embellished. We’ve had a few important family events since the incident where she’s tried acting like nothing happened and being buddy-buddy. We made it quite clear we want nothing to do with her. The few who’ve asked my husband have said she told them we cut off access to her family. When in reality she just doesn’t have access to my family. Meaning my husband, myself and our children. I blocked her on all social media. You don’t take accountability for your actions, you don’t get the access to my life. To throw your own words back at you, sorry, but not sorry. AITAH? Ditching this person from my life after she allowed her kids to abuse my kids? I don’t think so

Apparently, I’m only dragging my husband down and I’m a loser. I’m a bad mom. And much more. We’ve tried getting to a resolution, doing meditation with someone in the middle. It always came down to excuses on why she couldn’t make it, magically things came up. I told my husband it may be best if I didn’t go. If she was this uncaring about initially meeting up, I can imagine how the meeting would go…

I had to repost this as I deleted my first account accidentally 🤦🏼‍♀️