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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/blockedbabysitting on 2023-08-30 10:12:25.
Basically I (39F) was helping my sister Claire (38) with her kids 9M and 5F cos she’s going through a nasty split with their dad. They go to the same school as my kid, 6F and I work flexibly and from home so it was easy to pick the kids up and watch them for a few hours.
I was always paid for my time as was my husband who helped but i quit after Claire accused my kid of stealing. She said with no evidence or anything that since her daughter’s favourite doll was missing, it was obvious my daughter had stolen it since it was last at my house. I asked my daughter, she said no and I believed her. She said she saw my niece leave with it and I believed her. I even searched my whole damn house and couldn’t find it. I told my sister all this and she said that my daughter is a liar and a thief and that I’m enabling her and she expects me to pay for a new doll. I was so angry and incensed that she was being so nasty and horrible that I just said to her ‘my daughter is no liar and thief and you know what? I’m done. Find someone else to babysit cos it certainly won’t be me and hung up.’
I got 5 missed calls from Claire before I blocked her. She sent panicked messages and tried calling my husband and he blocked her too. We have learnt from my parents that Claire is panicking because she really needs help with the kids and I’m the only one with a sort of flexible routine to do so. She also said that she had found her daughter’s doll, and said that thighs are okay now but not once has she offered any sort of apology for what she said about my kid.
My parents think I am screwing her over by not helping and that she made an honest mistake and is just stressed and everything due to her marriage split. They have said that perhaps I should take the higher ground and move on from this and don’t seem to understand that my kid was accused of something she didn’t do. I see it as I don’t care if she’s shitty to me, but definitely if it’s about my kid and she hasn’t once said sorry for accusing my six year old daughter of being a thief. She disrespected my kid and no amount of bad situation or stress is preventing her from saying sorry and smoothing things over.
ETA: I should have added, my niece never said my daughter stole her doll. She just said something along the lines of ‘mummy I can’t find my doll’ and never said any other context to that. So my sister just assumed it meant my daughter stole it rather than believing it could have just been somewhere in her house.
I quit babysitting because she was rude, nasty and bitter and is expecting things to go back to normal just cos she found the doll. She isn’t admitting she messed up and I would be happy to babysit again but ONLY if she sincerely apologised, but she isn’t so here we are.