Being an aunt or an uncle is the greatest. You get to play and interact with the young ones in the family, but when the tantrums start, the sleep schedules are messed up, or when your niece or nephew is going through a rebellious phase, you can pleasantly take a backseat to all of the parenting responsibility. It takes a village to raise any little one, but sometimes parents take that saying too far, expecting their family members to pick up the slack of their responsibility. 

These parents were happy to let the village raise their 5-year-old son, but when the boy’s aunt started getting tired of being a full-time babysitter, they doubled down and guilt-tripped her. The mom felt entitled to her services and even called the 20-year-old aunt selfish for setting healthy boundaries, but this strong-armed approach to force the aunt into babysitting her nephew more often eventually backfired, pushing her away and driving a wedge between everyone in the family. 

Mom was getting too comfortable dumping her child onto her sister, and found out the hard way that you can’t force someone to be an ever-present parent figure. You’ll only end up losing your greatest free childcare asset in the process.