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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/khakipantsluvr on 2023-09-17 15:11:35.

My sister Rae F42 was trying to have a kid for a long time but struggled with infertility. After years of trying and money spent on fertility clinics, she finally had a “miracle baby”, Sue F12. Since Rae and her husband view Sue’s existence as a miracle, they treat her as one. From the time she could vocalize her wants, she got everything she wanted. As a result, Sue is kind of a nightmare. Whenever our family gets together, we have to do whatever she wants. We have to eat whatever she wants to eat, watch whatever movies she wants to watch, and we can’t do anything outside even though the rest of the family loves the outdoors, because Sue hates nature and will literally scream if she gets so much as a speck of dirt on her shoe. We had to stop doing Christmas together because she would throw tantrums if my kids got something she wanted.

I keep telling Rae that she is only setting Sue up for failure by spoiling her. Sue has no friends at her school because she doesn’t understand that other kids aren’t going to give her whatever she wants because they don’t see her as a miracle the way her parents do. She also has a bunch of mannerisms that other kids that age grew out of years ago. She still picks her nose in public, still whines and whimpers when things don’t go her way, still shops at Justice, and still believes in Santa and the Easter Bunny. Rae won’t listen to me, and says I should let kids be kids, ignoring the fact that Sue will be a teenager soon.

Last weekend we were all gathered at my parents’ house and Sue was writing a letter to Santa like she did every year. Of course, it was pages and pages long with a list of the most outrageous things a 12 year old could think of. I wasn’t planning on saying anything–I never do–but one day, while Rae was away, Sue and my son Finn M9 came running to me. Sue clearly had been crying and Finn looked rather smug. They both asked me if Santa was real. Normally Sue would never ask me to resolve issues, but her parents weren’t there, and I wasn’t going to coddle her the way her parents did. I said Santa wasn’t real.

The minute Rae got home, Sue ran to her crying and screaming that I told her Santa wasn’t real. Rae tried to calm her down and told her of course Santa was real and I was lying. When Rae put Sue down for a nap (yes, you read that right), she scolded me. She said I had no business trying to parent her child. I then told her that she wasn’t parenting her child so someone had to. Maybe the first step to self awareness for her is learning Santa isn’t real. I was hoping Rae would wake up and see the reality of the situation, but now she’s just ignoring my texts and calls. When I told my husband about everything, he wasn’t as supportive as I thought he would be. He agrees Sue is unbearable, but it’s not my place to fix that, and what I did probably did more harm than good. Should I have just said Santa was real and not gotten involved in this situation?