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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/throwawaymeantosil on 2023-09-16 14:20:08.

Thanks to some work-related perks, I was able to book two beach houses on the same block for my in-laws to join my husband, two kids, and I on a vacation. They paid me back for their portion already, but I made the reservation.

SIL relies heavily on her parents to take care of her children. Even as a SAHM, she has one or both of them at her house helping or sends her kids to their house a lot of the time. When all of them are together, I’ve noticed what regularly happens is the kids end up unsupervised because everyone thinks someone else is watching them. When we’re around, suddenly we end up in charge of the kids without being asked or even informed. One time, I was upstairs with my kids, their kids were downstairs, and they all left to grab lunch for us without telling me they were leaving. It’s a big house, so I didn’t hear them leave or the kids head outside to the yard while they were gone. When they returned, they saw the kids outside and tried to blame me for not watching them, when I had no idea they had left. Obviously, my husband set them straight and made sure they understood that if they wanted us to watch the kids they needed to ask us so that we know we’re supposed to be in charge. I felt good about booking the vacation after this conversation.

A few weeks later, we were all at a small public beach together. We started bringing our stuff down to the beach and one of their kids wanted to come with us, so FIL said “OK, go ahead with them,” loud enough for me to hear. Not asking, but at least I’m being informed that I’m in charge of him now and presumably they’re following closely behind. After at least 10 minutes at the beach, they still haven’t arrived and I notice their other child in the water by himself. I tell him to get out of the water and come over by me. I ask if they know he’s down here and he says yes, that they told him he could come down and swim. He wasn’t told to even check in with us so we knew he was there. I feel this is completely unsafe as I very easily could not have seen him in the water, and we had already had a very clear conversation about supervision of the children. I was too angry to have a productive conversation, and they are ones that immediately get defensive and shut down or get combative at any hint of confrontation, so we said nothing and just finished the beach day.

Once we got home, I told my husband I’m not comfortable going to the beach with them again and I canceled the reservation on the beach house. He returned their money and told them it’s because of what happened at the beach. Obviously, they were very upset and felt they deserved another chance because they had informed me about one child and the other child was supposed to check in with us and didn’t, so how can I punish all of them. My husband also feels that because they paid for their portion, it wasn’t necessarily fair of me to cancel it and we could’ve just had mostly separate vacations and refused to go to the beach with them. AITA?