do your brothers and sisters help out with children?

skintchick

My borther haasn't seen my 19mo dd since she was 5 months old buthe iss on a wordl trip for over aa year so is excused! Id love him to show interest, but eve before he went he didn't seem too bothered, although mum says he is always asking about her.

I know he wants kids but won't be having them cos his older gf doesn't want them and isprobably too old to have them, so itmust bepainful for him.

But I do wonder at attitudes like those of Any - you aren't being asked to take responsibility for them, you are being asked to form a relationship with them! They are your family and they won;t be children forever, you know, one day they will be grown-up and you might find you like them then, if you haven't already burned your bridges.

YOu don't have to want children to spend time with nephews or nieces.

ETA sorry for typos, I'm not very well and its distracting me.

*Louise*

I would never 'expect' anyone to help out on a regular basis, but it's nice if siblings want to spend time with their neices/nephews now and then.

We don't need babysitters that often, but sometimes things do crop up where you need to attend as a couple and you just can't take kids with you.

Sis1 - Has 2 of her own and has very little to do with my children, even when she visits she doesn't bother about them much tbh, even though I always hug her two and ask how they are getting on at school etc. Tbh they seem a bit uncomfortable with hugging and stuff, I don't think they are a very tactile family (maybe I should stop):o I have babysat for her once in the last couple of years but would never ask her to do the same. She babysits for sis2 though.

Brother - Never. Although he is nearly 30 now and married I just don't think he is sensible enough :eek: He does work long hours though, so we rarely see him anyway.

Sis2 - She is great and she loves the kids, I have offered to watch her LO while she works if she needs help (our mum has him 2 days a week atm) and she will watch mine if I have doctor/dentist appointments or suchlike. She invites eldest DS over most Saturday nights to stay - he is good with the baby and competes with her fiance on the xbox lol. She is the one who has agreed to look after the children if anything happens to us.


Edited:
Just remembered OH has a brother (that says a lot lol) he has three, we hardly ever see them these days - DD was nearly one before they met her for the first time. So- no babysitter there either lol

Any

skintchick wrote: »

My borther haasn't seen my 19mo dd since she was 5 months old buthe iss on a wordl trip for over aa year so is excused! Id love him to show interest, but eve before he went he didn't seem too bothered, although mum says he is always asking about her.

I know he wants kids but won't be having them cos his older gf doesn't want them and isprobably too old to have them, so itmust bepainful for him.

But I do wonder at attitudes like those of Any - you aren't being asked to take responsibility for them, you are being asked to form a relationship with them! They are your family and they won;t be children forever, you know, one day they will be grown-up and you might find you like them then, if you haven't already burned your bridges.

YOu don't have to want children to spend time with nephews or nieces.

ETA sorry for typos, I'm not very well and its distracting me.

You see, and I don't understand attitude like yours... "I would love for him to show more interest in my kid". I don't get what exactly would it bring him unless he just like kids and yours would then obviously be special as it is yours (judging you have good relationship from your post).

There is reason why some people don't have children and that is that they do not find them interesting. I am just not ready for them.

Some people are just good parents, or good with kids generally and some are not. It is the same like the old argument "why do some people not want kids". The fact just is they don't.

I may be asked as much as they want, but surely from your own life you realise that you have to want to do something to take something from it.

This might change in the future, however working full time, spending nearly every weekend at lectures and care for my own little family just makes me too tired to be interested in someone elses kids.

P.s.: I do babysit my own nieces if you haven't read my other posts and they know very well who I am. That does not mean I am beside myself with hapiness when I have to do it, I just sometimes begrudge it because when I don't want to my sister makes me feel guilty. Though I don't know why, she has better social life then me.

And you do have to like children/children stuff to like spending time with little kids, by the way. You do not form the same bond with kids just because your sister gave birth to them like mother does when she gave birth to them.

concerned43

Before my own child was born I had my nephew and nieces over every day of the week and kept them overnight at weekends. When my son was born my sisters/mum/mil only looked after him if they were paid!!
This has caused a lot of resentment and upset as I will no longer offer to pay for spending time with him and therefore no one does!

scooby088

skintchick wrote: »

My borther haasn't seen my 19mo dd since she was 5 months old buthe iss on a wordl trip for over aa year so is excused! Id love him to show interest, but eve before he went he didn't seem too bothered, although mum says he is always asking about her.

I know he wants kids but won't be having them cos his older gf doesn't want them and isprobably too old to have them, so itmust bepainful for him.

But I do wonder at attitudes like those of Any - you aren't being asked to take responsibility for them, you are being asked to form a relationship with them! They are your family and they won;t be children forever, you know, one day they will be grown-up and you might find you like them then, if you haven't already burned your bridges.

YOu don't have to want children to spend time with nephews or nieces.

ETA sorry for typos, I'm not very well and its distracting me.

Why does your brother have to form a relationship with your child? I am very fortunate in the fact that my OH can't have anymore children and my sister being gay may never have children either. I have never wanted children...like some have said on here they are boring after a while.

*Louise*

concerned43 wrote: »

Before my own child was born I had my nephew and nieces over every day of the week and kept them overnight at weekends. When my son was born my sisters/mum/mil only looked after him if they were paid!!
This has caused a lot of resentment and upset as I will no longer offer to pay for spending time with him and therefore no one does!

Ouch, I can understand the resentment on your side :mad:

Can I ask - how did you get into the situation where you started paying them in the first place? Doesn't seem fair that your sisters at least wouldn't return the favour for you. That's gratitude for you

Any

concerned43 wrote: »

Before my own child was born I had my nephew and nieces over every day of the week and kept them overnight at weekends. When my son was born my sisters/mum/mil only looked after him if they were paid!!
This has caused a lot of resentment and upset as I will no longer offer to pay for spending time with him and therefore no one does!

I bet that caused lots of resentment..
Can't believe your mother would take a payment for occasional babysitting!! Or was it regular arrangement?

I bet this happens in a lot of families though.. Unless the kids are close enough and can play together - the more the marrier and can entertain each other - it is really hard to look after number of kids at once.

euronorris

scooby088 wrote: »

Why does your brother have to form a relationship with your child? I am very fortunate in the fact that my OH can't have anymore children and my sister being gay may never have children either. I have never wanted children...like some have said on here they are boring after a while.

To be fair, they may be boring to you (and I'm sure plenty of other people), but I find children very entertaining and inadvertenly amusing too!

The things they say, in all innocence, have me in stitches at times.

skintchick

scooby088 wrote: »

Why does your brother have to form a relationship with your child? I am very fortunate in the fact that my OH can't have anymore children and my sister being gay may never have children either. I have never wanted children...like some have said on here they are boring after a while.

You could ask why does anyone have to form a relationship with ANY member of their family, and in a sense you could answer that they don't, but doesn't it make life so much nicer if we do?

It's intriguing to me that people claim to find children boring. I didn;t want children or marriage for a very large part of my life, but even then I wouldn;t have claimed children were boring. The things they do may not interest you actively, but does that make them boring? If I don't like my friend's trainspotting hobby (true) does that make him boring per se? No. It might make conversations with him about trains tedious to me, but actually, I find that if I engage with him about it, ask him questions, and try to show an interest in what he finds exciting, then some of what he talks about IS interesting, if I but make the effort.

Which brings me to:

Any wrote: »

There is reason why some people don't have children and that is that they do not find them interesting. I am just not ready for them.
.

So, are you not ready, OR are they not interesting? And if they are not interesting, isn;t some of that your fault? By which I mean, we can choose to engage with a subject or not (see above). Children, and their development, and the way they learn is, in fact fascinating, but you do have to get on their level both lhysically and emotionally, and see things through their eyes, in order to experience that. It is of course your choice not to do that, but it IS an active choice. If you really wanted to get to know these children in your family, then you would.

If we were not talking about children, but instead were talking about adults, would you think it acceptable to say 'I simply do not want to bother to get to know these people'? Or indeed, to say, blanket-wise 'people bore me'. ALL people? When you say you find Children (capital deliberate) boring, it makes me think you simply have nto ever tried to engage with any, because all children cannot be boring to you, in the same way that all adults cannnot be boring to you. As a concept, yes, but as individuals? I think not.

Any wrote: »

You see, and I don't understand attitude like yours... "I would love for him to show more interest in my kid". I don't get what exactly would it bring him unless he just like kids and yours would then obviously be special as it is yours (judging you have good relationship from your post).

Some people are just good parents, or good with kids generally and some are not. .

It would bring him the same things a good relationship with any adult would bring him, family or not.

I don;t agree that some pepople are good with kids and some not. I don;t think it is a preordained thing, written in your genes, I believe that you can choose to try and understand others and get on with them, both children and adults, and that you can learn to be good with types of people you find challenging (for you that is children, for other people it may be loud people, or domineering ones, or needy ones, whatever).

It keeps coming back to choice. If you don;t choose to engage with people and make an effort, then nothing will change.

Any wrote: »

I may be asked as much as they want, but surely from your own life you realise that you have to want to do something to take something from it.

.

Yes but you can choose to do it and to face it positively, and sometimes that mere act can change your perceptions and result in you getting something from it.

Although, I do wonder at an attitude that says you HAVE to 'get something' from everything you do. Have you never heard of selflessness? Of doing things primarily or wholly for others? It can be very rewarding.

Any wrote: »

This might change in the future, however working full time, spending nearly every weekend at lectures and care for my own little family just makes me too tired to be interested in someone elses kids.
.
.

Are you also too tired to be interested in other PEOPLE? Grown-up ones I mean? Or would you welcome the opportunity to meet new people at a dinner party? Because if you would, then you aren;t too tired to engage with people and you could, if you chose, put the same effort into non-grown-up people too.

Any wrote: »

And you do have to like children/children stuff to like spending time with little kids, by the way. You do not form the same bond with kids just because your sister gave birth to them like mother does when she gave birth to them.

I agree you won;t AUTOMATICALLY form a bond, and you can never form the same bond as a loving mother, but I disagree that you have to like children/children stuff to like spending time with kids. I don;t especially LIKE doing two-piece jigsaws, or reading Spot books, or moving plastic animals around a plastic farm, but I DO get a lot from the enjoyment children take from it, and I do enjoy seeing those lightbulb moments where they suddenly learn something new, whether it is that this sheep won't fit through that door but it will fit through the bigger one, or that if you push things off the table then they will always fall.

I;m sorry to bang on about it (actually I'm not but I appreciate I'm probably boring you with it) but it just comes down to 'Will you choose to engage with, and get to know, these children who are your family, or will you not?'

And for me, someone who answers that question 'not' is a closed-minded, self-centred person who is also exercising some serious discrimination against non-grown-up people, who will one day be grown-up people you may well have enjoyed a relationship with, but who might well choose to reject you in the same way you rejected them.

And I do see that you spend time with your nieces, and this isn;t meant as a particular criticism of you, but express some strong opinions so I wanted to discuss them with you. Think of it in an academic rather than personal way if at all possible. You raise interesting points, and I like to debate, especially when I am bed-bound!

*Louise*

skintchick wrote: »

And for me, someone who answers that question 'not' is a closed-minded, self-centred person who is also exercising some serious discrimination against non-grown-up people, who will one day be grown-up people you may well have enjoyed a relationship with, but who might well choose to reject you in the same way you rejected them.

Actually, a good point there.

At a family event recently one of my uncles asked I never go and visit him or phone him. He (along with other 4 uncles on both sides of the family) never bothered about any of us when we were younger, I never saw him for years at a time and we hadn't even had a proper conversation until that evening. He looked a bit put out when I explained that tbh, but you reap what you sow.