It’s great to have a neighbor who cares about us deeply. But that wasn’t the case for a Reddit user who talked about her bad experience. It made her feel bad that her neighbor took advantage of her kindness over time. At first, she was happy to watch her neighbor’s kids.
She told people her story and asked for help on the internet.
My neighbor is Sara (38F). She has two boys, ages 8 and 12, and I have two girls, ages 8 and 11. Sara is married, but her husband has to travel for work a lot, so she does her job from home. Since I’m a teacher, I’m “off” during school breaks and the summer. During winter break, Sara’s kids kept coming over to play with my kids. [“Play”] means they were sent over because they’re bothering their mom while she works.
The kids used to be friends, but now that they’re older, they don’t really have much in common with each other and have grown apart. The schools our kids go to are very different from each other. Her kids go to a private school, and my kids go to a public school. These days, they don’t play together very often, and when they do, Sara’s kids fight a lot! They fight with my kids and with each other.
The younger one came to the door during winter break to ask if my kids could play. I told him they didn’t want to play right now. Sara texted me that she was on a work call and would love to get the boys out of the house for a while. I gave in and told my girls to look for something they could do together.
After ten minutes, my oldest son came upstairs crying because one of the boys had said something mean about how boring our house was and how stupid it was that I wouldn’t let him play Xbox. My husband owns the Xbox, which is in our family room, where I was doing laundry and watching a show. The boys knew they could leave if they were bored.
It’s almost spring break, and Sara just asked if I could watch the boys for two days because she has two busy work days and I’m “off work.” I told her “no” because we were going to be on vacation in Florida with family. Okay, she said, “I guess I’ll just hit you up in the summer,” but it was only half-joking. I replied that I would NOT be watching her kids over the summer. (For real emergencies, yes).
I replied, “I’m sorry, but just because I’m not at school during the summer does not mean that I am your free childcare.” In fact, I don’t work during the summer. Instead, I teach online summer school and take classes for my master’s. This means that I also work from home.
She got angry with me and told me I should help her because she spends a lot of time alone and finds it hard to keep the kids busy all day now that they are older. It was fine for the kids to play together outside in the summer, but I told her I wouldn’t watch her kids or be responsible for them unless she paid me.
There isn’t as much getting along between the kids as there used to be. My kids don’t fight with each other like her kids do, and my kids don’t really want them to be at our house all the time. She is mad at me now and won’t talk to me. Her oldest child told my oldest child that I’m not a good person because I won’t help my neighbor.
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