I Abandoned My Niece Because My Sister Wouldn't Come and Get Her

Taking care of a little kid is no joke. You’re always on edge—making sure they stay out of trouble, keeping them fed and entertained, cleaning up their endless messes, and somehow functioning on barely any sleep. It’s nonstop chaos.

For one Redditor’s sister, parenting her two-year-old had her totally overwhelmed. Sometimes, she’d sneak off to the bathroom for a quick break and leave her teenage brother in charge of her daughter. But after too many of these “quick favors,” her brother hit his limit. He left the toddler by herself and walked out of the house.

This bold move set off a mix of reactions online. Let’s dive into the full story.

A young man turned to Reddit to share his emotional and controversial story.

A young man, 19, has recently turned to Reddit with an emotional post that made people burst with emotions in comments.

The OP wrote [edited], “My sister, 26, still lives at home and always asks me to watch her kid for
‘2 minutes’ while she runs to the bathroom. She then sits there eternally and doesn’t show up. She just uses it as an excuse when she’s fed up of being with her kid. Recently, when she did it again, I became mad and decided to teach her a lesson.”

The man added, “She goes and then time keeps ticking away, and 2 minutes turns into 15 minutes, and she still isn’t back. And you wonder what’s taking her so long, so you go and bang on the door, and then she finally comes out 20 minutes after she left.”

One day, the OP’s sister really crossed the line with her entitled behavior.

The man shared, “I know what she’s doing when she asks for this, so I always say no, but she asked me this time and I said yeah because I wasn’t doing anything anyway. But I did have to leave in 10–15 minutes and I told her that, and she said she wouldn’t be that long.

I took for her word for it and just went and amused her daughter (2) for the time being. It was getting closer to the time I had to leave at, and she still wasn’t out, so I messaged her, and she said she would be 1 minute.

A minute passed, and she still wasn’t out, so I went up to the door and told her I had to go, and I got no response, presumably because she was wearing NC headphones, either that or she was ignoring me.”

The OP has had enough and made a decision to leave the child unsupervised.

The OP wrote, “I didn’t have time to wait, so I went back and told my niece to go and get her mom and I just left, and I could hear her crying and running after me as I was walking out the door.

When I got back, my sister was pissed and asked what was wrong with me and why would I just ‘abandon’ her while she was crying like that, and I just said I had to go, and I did tell her I had to be gone by a certain time. I felt a bit bad, but at the same time she’s not my child.”

Redditors were quick to react to the OP’s story in the comments.

One person shared, “Well, next time she’s gonna learn. If you enable her behavior, she’s gonna escalate it until she’s gone for the week, and you watch her child-absolutely not.
She wanted it, she has to take care of it. Tough, but the world is hard.”

Another commenter said, “Sounds like she is regressing as far away from being a responsible parent as long as she can prey on family to do her work for her and live without rent. Does she have a job? Seriously, putting on NC headphones and shutting your door when you have an infant is one of the most selfish, ignorant, and negligent things I have heard of.
It literally sounds like she isn’t even interested in helping the child develop. Actually, taking smaller — instead of larger steps to help — to avoid caring for the child......or caring about the child. These are huge red flags.
These are the actions of an ignorant teenager — not a GD 26 yo mother. Sorry to say, but this child deserves a much better life than she has. Your family has successfully coddled/enabled your sister to the point of the baby’s needs coming in a distant second.
What is the actual plan to care and provide for the baby going forward? Saving for a house? Her own place? This whole thing seems sketchy.”

One user wrote, “IDK, there’s obviously something amiss that’s making her act like this — presumably because raising a toddler is hard. However, she has obviously worked out an inconsiderate way of coping. Perhaps her baby daddy is a dead weight, and she needs time on her own (some toddlers follow you into the toilet and get very upset when they can’t intently watch you pooping — they’re very intense little people.)
It’s not normal to come tearing down the stairs screaming and crying that you’ve abandoned her daughter, seemingly with her. Something is wrong, I think OP (who I don’t think is guilty) should maybe try to talk to his sister and get to the bottom of what’s wrong.”

And here’s another strong family dilemma, which led to a tense conflict between the closest people, a mother and her daughter. The mom had to kick out her pregnant daughter together with her 6 kids, because she was fed up with how her daughter treated her life and her motherhood.