I'm new here, but I could really use some advice.
I have a 19-month-old little boy. I work two days a week in order to pay off my student loans; we can live comfortably on my DH's salary, but not once we factor the loans I took out for six years while trying to figure out what to do with my life. So I am kind of stuck working two days a week. My schedule is not flexible, and neither is DH's. My MIL watches the baby one day and my mother the other day. They both adore my little boy and are great with him, and for the most part, we're happy with the child care arrangements.
The issue is that my mother is also watching my sister's children. My neice is 3 and my nephew 18 months. My sister and I work at the same job and are consistantly scheduled to work the same shifts, though we've requested not to due to child care issues. Like I said, scheduling is not very flexible. My sister is a single mom just coming out of a very abusive marriage. she has absolutely no child care other than my mom and cannot afford day care. She has applied for day care subsidies but they are very limited. I understand she has no choice other than my mom, and that she absolutely has to work.
My problem is that her kids, especially her three-year-old, are terribly behaved. I understand that they are in a chaotic situation, have witnessed their mother being abused, and now that the court has given their father some visitation, are being bounced between three households(their mom's, their dad's, and my mom's) on a regular basis with no stability or consistancy. Add into this that my sister often works 40 hours straight, they go days without seeing their mom as well as their dad. I understand that this sort of chaos can create bad behavior, but it has really started to affect my son.
For instance, tonight, while we were all at my mom's for a birthday party, my niece picked up my son and literally tossed him out of a kid's size chair so she could sit in it. I had to pull her off of him at one point when she was trying to hug or wrestle him(not sure either) before he bit her, and she was repeatedly running around the house with her 18-month-old brother and running into my son. There were multiple instances of these kind of things. My mom would correct my niece, but my sister just sat there and said nothing. Then when it was time to go, my niece started hitting and scratching my sister, pulling hair, the whole works. My son was supposed to spend the night with my mom as a special treat(he LOVES spending the night with Grandma and rarely gets too), and when my niece threw the temper tantrum, my sister looked at my mom and asked if my niece could spend the night...my mom said she wasn't behaving, but my sister insisted, and my mom gave in. At this point I picked up my son and said I was going to take him home. I didn't mean to cause an issue, and I totally trust my mom, but I wasn't going to leave him there with my niece. And I had talked all day about going night-night at Grandma's, so now my son was confused and he is far too little to understand at all. He cried all the way home.
I don't know...how would you all handle this? I don't have a great deal of childcare options right now, so he has to be with my niece and nephew at my mom's once a week. And it broke my heart tonight after promising he could stay at Grandma's all day long, and my son is very verbal and cried all the way home that he was going to go night night there. Did I overreact to the situation? Should I just not say anything, or try to talk to my sister? My mom already knows how I feel, but I really feel tonight that she just caved in to my niece when she knew I would not allow my son to spend the night there(we've talked multiple times about my concerns).
Ugh...I'm sorry it's so long. I just value the wisdom I've read on these boards and I need some right now.