I Think My Niece Is Trying to Hurt My Baby (2024)

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My brother was constantly sick during my childhood and took all the attention of my parents. What was ever left over went to my sister and her antics. I basically was left to fade into the wallpaper. When I was 12, I went over to a sleepover and stayed an extra two days. My parents didn’t notice I was gone.

He died when I was fourteen. My sister responded by making the lives of everyone else hell. She dropped out of school and spent her 20s in and out of jail. My parents were unable to help me with college loans because they spent the money on lawyers. My sister finally ran out of luck and will be behind bars for the next 20 years, leaving my parents to raise her toddler. My niece was born addicted to drugs and has a host of mental and physical problems because of it. She is 7 now.

I have a six-month-old son. We can’t leave the baby alone with her. She is jealous of any attention paid to him. She openly says she hates the baby and wishes he would go away. If my mother is holding my son, my niece will attempt to push him out of my mother’s lap because she wants cuddles. I caught her putting soft toys over my son’s face, despite being told that is dangerous for him. She claimed just to want to “share” with the baby. After that, I refused to come over with the baby or let my parents watch him if my niece is there. As a result, my parents haven’t seen my son for a month, unless we meet up for lunch. They claim my boundaries are too difficult and my niece didn’t mean any harm.

I know it isn’t completely rational, but it feels like a repeat of my sister and me. The well-being of my son and myself will never matter enough to them. I am wondering if it would be better in the long run for my son not to know his grandparents at all rather than constantly be proven not to be a priority.

—History Repeats Again

Dear History,

This story starts with a misfortune: Your brother was sick, so sick that he died. Then comes a period where there are a bunch of people who, in responding to this misfortune and its ramifications in their lives, failed you, in complicated ways that were both in and out of their control. Your parents shouldn’t have taken your relative self-sufficiency for granted and let you raise yourself, and your sister sounds like someone who should have taken control of her own life but didn’t. There’s no question that they did you wrong.

Now, the story introduces a new character who is also suffering misfortune: your niece, born with addiction, separated from her mom, and raised by grandparents who have been struggling with family trouble for decades and are (I’d guess) exhausted. She may be annoying, and difficult as hell, but she’s 7, and she got dealt a very tough hand. I can imagine that seeing everyone dote upon, cuddle, and enjoy the fresh new baby, who gets (from a 7-year-old’s perspective) to do whatever he wants and be celebrated for it, could be difficult.

It is very normal, your niece’s particulars aside, for kids this age to be jealous of others they see as getting something they don’t have. My own 7-year-old child, who has many fewer struggles in life, got jealous recently of me and my husband because we “got” to co-sign a check I was going to deposit to our account. She wanted to add her own signature, so she wouldn’t be “left out.” Rational thought fades in and out, at this age.

All of which is to say: I hope you can find a way to perceive your niece on her own terms, without projecting too much of your past family dynamic on her. Why can’t you visit the house with the baby, but just make sure not to leave him alone with her? That seems like it would solve the “physical danger” problem. If you would like a reason to spend less time at your parents’ house, that’s a different conversation, and is totally valid. But I don’t think your niece deserves to be seen as the Bad Seed, based on what you’ve observed so far.

—Rebecca

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