This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/NaturalCow2262 on 2023-07-31 12:08:28.
Throwaway account, not native speaker.
I’m (31F) a stay at home mom, my son is 3y.o and my daughter is 6 months old. My husband’s niece, Jessica (19F) stays at our place 3-4 days a week because she goes to university close to our place. When she’s not here she goes back to stay with her mom (my SIL).
Jessica doesn’t pay rent or do house chores, although her mom sometimes gives us about $100 to help with bills just whenever she can.
Onto the problem. So my house is pretty noisy. My daughter would cry if she’s not psychically on me. Most of the time I would always carry her around so she wouldn’t cry. But on the daily whenever I have to bathe my son, I would leave her in her crib and she would scream cry like the world is ending. This usually happens about 15-20 minutes a day. And she’s safe, she just doesn’t like not being with me. Once I pick her up she would stop crying instantly.
On top of that my son would throw tantrums pretty often. At home, I just ignore him and let him screech scream and trash around. To be fair, my son’s scream would pierce your ears. Sometimes I have to wear noise cancelling headphones and cover my daughter’s ears while he’s throwing tantrums. And he does it a lot, like 3-4 times a week, sometimes it happens twice a day. He usually would calm down after an hour, the longest was two hours.
There’s one particular night when Jessica was at the kitchen washing her dishes, and my son was at the living room just beside the kitchen. He was throwing a really bad tantrum because I wanted him to say “please”. If this is a public space or other people’s house I would turn on youtube and he would calm down right away. But because we’re at home, I thought he should learn to navigate his big feelings without youtube.
He screamed, screeched, thrashed around like a mad man, while I was at the dining table eating my dinner, just a couple steps away from him. Sometimes he took rests from screaming and I gave him water, but once he started screaming again I left him again and back to continuing my dinner. When he stops screaming I would ask if he’s done, then I’d hold his hand and say something like “Repeat after me: Mom open the box please,” but if he starts screaming again I would leave again. This continued for about an hour an a half.
Jessice secretly recorded some of it (me calmly eating while watching my son screeching), and she sent it to her family group chat that I am not a part of. She didn’t say anything to me—we typically pretend the other doesn’t exist. She also didn’t say anything when sending the video.
My husband was offended by her sending the video as if she was ratting me out. But other SIL said maybe I should do something to calm my kids when they’re clearly in distress. She knows it happens a lot, which means Jessica had said something to them before.
They’re now fighting. Other family members chose not to get involved. I don’t think I’m wrong but AITA for ignoring my kid’s tantrums?
Your relatives saying to reward tantrums are wrong. You will only torture the boy for his entire life with lack of self control and all the outcomes of that, if you reward and reinforce his tantrums, and establish them as successful strategies in his brain.