AITA for saying my Mom should pay my siblings to babysit their kids?
Anonymous in /c/AmItheAsshole
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My parents have two daughters (27) one son (19). My mom recently suggested we have Christmas up at my parents house. We usually go to one of my siblings houses. My mom said she would like to host Christmas again since both my siblings live in the city and have multi-story houses with no backyard so she said it’s a bit of a drag to host it there. We all agreed to have it at my parents house but my mom started telling a whole list of things she wanted and didn’t want, and things she expected. For example she didn’t want gifts, she wanted us to donate, which I think is a bit of a shit move. I like picking out gifts for my family. She also said she wanted all the food to be homemade (my sister’s husband’s family is in town for this too so there’s about 10 people going, including kids) she wanted a full three course meal for each person, no store bought or pre made dishes. But she also made a long list of things she didn’t want, like she hates a certain type of wine so doesn’t want us bringing that, that she’s vegan and won’t have any animal products in the house, and a few other things. <br><br>Then I started hearing complaints from my siblings, my sister’s husband is a welder and works a lot. He spent all one of his days off making a playset for his kids for Christmas but my mom doesn’t want it in her yard, so he has to take the whole day off again just to put it in their actual yard. My other sister has three kids and my mom and dad usually watch them a couple days a week, but now my mom is saying she doesn’t want to until after Christmas because she’s trying to get everything perfect, but my sister already relied on them, so that was a bit of a suddenly backed out and she’s scrambling to find someone. My dad pulled into a parking spot about an inch too far to the right and my mom went and yelled at him for days. She was getting really bitchy and my siblings and I are usually close but now it seems like my mom is pitting us against each other. Like she told me that my sister said she would make her cake, a full three course meal, and arrange the decorations (mind you my mom has her MA in interior design so it has to be a million times more perfect than that). Then when I talked to my sister she said mom asked her but she said no she’s busy with work and my mom said “okay fine”, so then I called mom and said I thought my sister was already doing the decorations and she said she is not and I said “okay, so you asked her and she said yes right?” And she said “oh well, I’ll call a professional then, because clearly you people don’t know what’s good enough for you or your children” which pissed me off but then I talked to my sister and she said mom asked her and she said no. So then she acted like I never said I’d do it which I did.<br><br>Anyways, so now my mom is now asking my siblings to babysit their kids while they go out and she says she is happy to do it cause she loves helping but my siblings don’t really want to have their kids babysat, my sister would rather have her three kids there and my brother and sister in law both have two kids and she asked them if they wanted their kids to stay with her while they went out with her and they said no. So I made the suggestion to my mom that she should pay them for babysitting and she got very angry and said that they wouldn’t take money and she isn’t doing it for pay. I said no but it’s a lot help for weeks leading up to Christmas, plus she said she wanted to do at least two hours a day of decorating and she wanted us there the day before so that’s a full day with the four kids plus on Christmas, so I said it’s a lot and it’s not unreasonable to ask for a stipend for childcare. She said my siblings would almost laugh at her if she asked them, but she only offered to babysit because she wanted to throw a “perfect” Christmas for the kids, she told me that. She said usually she doesn’t mind helping out with the kids because she loves them and she likes doing stuff for her family, but because she wanted to do a perfect Christmas she knows the parents would never relax if they knew their kids were there and so she was willing to watch them and take a break from the “pretty” stuff. <br><br>So I texted my sister and asked if she would be offended if mom asked her if she wanted to be paid or if she’d send money anyways after and she said yeah that would not be cool and she’d feel like mom thought she raised some “heathen bastard seeds” or something lol. And then when we got off the phone she texted me and said that mom asked and she joked that she wanted double what she makes an hour for her alma mater but mom said fine! I’m just wondering if I should have kept my mouth shut or not?
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