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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/thelairoflilith on 2023-09-24 17:45:43.

The initial event was years ago, however it still bothers me to this day and still causes tension between my brother and I.

My brother was doing… something (I don’t remember) and needed a babysitter. I had already been bullied into doing it for free by him and our mom just because he’s family, even though I babysat for a living at that point and had even been a nanny for a while. It’s not like I was going to ask for my full rate or something, but sacrificing my night (and potential PAID babysitting gig) so he could enjoy his without any kind of compensation was annoying. That’s not the issue though, I agreed to do it as a favor.

Long story short, his son (was about 4-5 at the time) was being an absolute TERROR, despite me engaging him with activities we could do together, fun kids shows he picked out, games, so on and so forth. He just decided to shut down and stop listening and kept throwing things. I would firmly tell him no, put whatever he threw out of his reach, and try to explain that we don’t throw things and if he wanted to play or do something else we could figure out something new.

Not 10 seconds would pass before he would grab something else and throw it (often in my direction). This went on for about 20 minutes before I gave up and said alright, if you can’t behave and play nicely, then you can’t play at all. I picked up everything and put it all away. There was only about 5-10 minutes left before my brother was supposed to get there anyways. So, I put a chair in the corner and put him in time out. He screamed and cried and threw a fit but stayed in the chair and I simply ignored him. He was still crying when my brother arrived.

When I tell you my brother LOST. HIS. MIND over me putting his son in timeout for misbehaving… he yelled at me about how his kids weren’t going to like me. I told him that was fine, I didn’t need them to like me, I needed them to respect me if they were ever to be in my care. He continued to berate me until I finally told him my services would no longer be available to him and to find someone else, since he clearly wanted some pushover doormat for his kids to walk all over and that wasn’t me.

I never babysat for him again. That was his oldest son who is currently 13 and he has 5 kids now. The youngest is about 4, but I still refuse to watch any of his children.

Recently, we got in a pretty big fight because he couldn’t find a babysitter and just because I was technically available (I’m disabled and work from home) I reminded him that I will not be watching any of his kids due to the event described above. He was livid that I would still refuse based on something that happened so long ago and idk if I’m being unreasonable or if I should let it go by now… so, AITA?