Parents play a big role in their children’s lives, but a bad parent can do more harm than good. Absentee or neglectful parents will make their kids everyone else’s problem and shirk responsibility whenever they can. This makes it harder on the people in their lives who have to pick up the slack.
This is what happened to a woman who suddenly found herself parenting her niece and nephews all because her entitled brother tried to force babysitting duties on her. She explained what actually went down between them.
More info: Reddit
Sister, who is always forced to do babysitting duties, finally decides to call the police on big brother after he leaves his 3 children on her doorstep when she isn’t even at home
Image credits: Allan Mas (not the actual photo)
23YO lady shares that her 27YO brother kept forcing babysitting duties on her, she would take care of his 3 children so that he and his wife could go out
Image credits: Mikhail Nilov (not the actual photo)
One day, her brother called to say he was leaving the kids with her, she told him that she had other plans and was already driving to pick up a friend, but he persisted
Image credits: Kindel Media (not the actual photo)
Even though she threatened to call the police, 15 minutes later, she got a notification and saw through her Ring doorbell camera that the kids were waiting at her doorstep
Image credits: Ivan Samkov (not the actual photo)
Eventually, when she got back to the children and called the police, they involved CPS in the matter, who took custody of the kids till their parents could be contacted
Image credits: Anna Tarazevich (not the actual photo)
The woman’s brother lost custody of his kids on 3 counts of child endangerment
Image credits: Friendsyesorno
5 months later, the 23YO became a guardian to her nieces and nephews
The Original Poster (OP) is a 23-year-old woman. She told netizens that her brother, who is 27, has three children—a 5-year-old girl and 3-year-old twins. He and his wife kept forcing her to babysit their kids even if she had plans so that they could go out. But, once, her brother took things too far and called her up last minute to tell her he was leaving the children at her house. She refused because she was already on the way to meet her friend.
He did not care about what she had planned for the day and demanded that she watch the kids. After some back and forth, she warned him that she would call the police if he left them with her. The guy did not heed her warning and abandoned his little ones on her doorstep. The only way she got to know about it was when she received a notification from her Ring doorbell camera. The woman panicked and decided to call the police as soon as she reached back.
She explained her actions and told commenters that “it wasn’t about the babysitting. I loved to babysit them, it was him just thinking I was going to drop everything and come home to babysit after I told him no and I wasn’t home. I love them and had I been asked beforehand I would have changed my plans and watched them.”
“Another issue is at the time the 3-year-olds had just turned 3, they couldn't eat a lot of solid foods yet. I had nothing they could eat [and] I had no clear bedsheets left and my extra blankets were at my grandpa's house so I literally couldn't take care of them that night,” she added. Knowing all this and that his sister would have to put aside her plans to babysit, the man still went ahead and dropped his kids off.
His disregard for the people around him and the fact that he didn’t care about the safety of his children shows how neglectful he was. The woman was right to involve the police so that they could report the case to CPS (although not from the U.S, the poster mentioned that they have an equivalent government body). The Child Protective Services gets involved if neglect or abuse is suspected. It can be for many reasons, such as failure to provide adequate care or not taking responsibility for the children, which are all things OP’s brother and his wife did.
Image credits: Tatiana Syrikova (not the actual photo)
Child neglect makes up 78% of all maltreatment cases, and that’s a distressing statistic to consider. This kind of abuse can harm a child’s development by causing deficits in attention, increasing their stress levels, and impacting brain activity. As the poster stated, her brother’s children were eventually taken away by CPS because of child endangerment. The young kids must have been put through so much due to the couple’s carelessness.
Luckily, OP decided to become a guardian to her niece and nephews and look after them. She told netizens: “They are absolutely no burden to me at all, I love the 3 of them. It has never felt like I lost anything. It was overwhelming at first with all the CPS stuff and paperwork, but I have never doubted that I gained something from taking them in and I hope they did too.”
It might be difficult for a 23-year-old to look after such young kids, but she mentioned: “I do have help. I have my partner of 4 years who is great with them and my grandpa who now lives 10 minutes away who loves his grandbabies. I have been thinking it through; even if I was all alone, no one to help me, I would still have taken them in. It was mostly an adjustment period that was hard. It's better now [and] they are very well behaved considering their ages.”
This is the best possible outcome of the whole situation. The children now have a safe place to live in and grow. Research shows that the negative effect of neglect can be reversed or reduced through timely intervention. But simply removing the kids from a toxic environment isn’t enough, it’s also important to get therapeutic support.
Although it might not be ideal for children to be separated from their parents, it’s good that these little ones were taken away from a possibly abusive household. The young woman showed a lot of bravery in the situation and took 3 children under her wing. People were proud of her actions and could not believe her brother’s audacity. Do you think this situation could have been avoided in any way? Feel free to share your thoughts.
Netizens stood up for the poster and told her she was right to call the police, it was likely there was much more happening for the kids to have been taken away from the couple
