If sis didn’t specify these things you did with him in advance as no-gos, and you did this as a way to bond with the young man by sharing his interests, and didn’t undermine sis’s authority in front of him, then you’re the cool uncle. You can further use this bond to help your sister get Lil’ Johnny under control, by subtly backing her up but setting your place up (still as the cool uncle) as a place for Lil’ Johnny to vent some steam and do some of the things he’s not allowed to at home but still toe the same major lines (grades, drugs, curfews, drinking, etc…) as sis and therefore show Lil’ Johnny that some rebellion is OK but some isn’t and thus back up the important stuff and help teach Lil’ Johnny what is important and why and that he can be cool just like cool Uncle Yeeter and still go to school, get good grades, not take drugs or drink, etc…
If you knew sis wouldn’t approve, and did it because you don’t approve of the way she’s managing Lil Johnny, then you’re not the cool uncle - you’re being a jerk and making her job harder. If you were telling Lil’ Johnny that your sis was being too tough, that he should be allowed to do these ‘normal kid things’ then doubly so. She’s got a tough job ahead of her if Lil’ Johnny has discipline and acting-out problems already; you don’t have to be as hard-ass as she is, but you can’t undermine her or it becomes not just tough but damn-near impossible to get Lil Johnny back into the world of normal teenage rebellion rather than out-of-control teenager who’s going to hurt himself or others for life.
My 2 bits, anyway… worth as much as advice from the internet ever is
Well, what if it had been your son, and she thought it would be good for him to get some religion? So she buys him a Bible and a book on Creationism, and takes him to church. That okay by you?
This, and pretty much what everyone else said. I also have the temporary care of a sixteen year old boy who’s always been allowed a bit more than he ought to have, and I think your sister’s got enough to handle. She’s got the responsibility, she gets to make the rules. That is, unless she was secretly okay with the rule-breaking.
Not by me, but if I had a fundamentalist relative (and in fact I do) taking care of my hypothetical kids, I would first warn the kid before he went over and second ask the relative to not take my kid to church or to evangelize to them. If they then took Lil Juan to church against my express wishes I would have harsh things to say to them and not allow them to take care of Juan in future, and would tell Juan (especially if he was 16) why I was so angry (not with him, with them).
Bad brother & bad uncle. These are not your decisions to make - they are your sister’s. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference that she’s “just” a year and a half older than you. She has accepted the responsibility to raise this teenager - you have not. You should have this discussion and make these arguments with your sister, not go behind her back to provide what you think the boy needs. There may be more going on than you know about. There may not. Either way, if she doesn’t want him to see R-rated movies or play GTA4, it is not your place to defy her.
Right, but there was every indication from the OP that that was done. He knew, as the uncle, what the ground rules were, which he thought were “overly harsh”. He couldn’t think they were harsh if he didn’t know what they were. Moreover, he said she “would certainly not allow” him to do what he did. So there’s no question but what he knew. We don’t know whether she warned her son or not, as you say you would warn yours, but we can assume the son knows her feelings because the OP said that he’s been “sneaking around” violating her wishes. There’s no need to sneak if you don’t know something is forbidden.
I’m not saying he’s a bad person of any kind — uncle or father. But he has no standing, in my opinion, to counter the wishes of the child’s mother (or guardian) no matter what his opinions are. If he wants to raise a kid by standards he doesn’t consider “draconian”, he should make or adopt one.
She is not being “outrageously protective” by not allowing him to play “M” rated video games or see “R” rated movies. Nor is it your business to try and correct her mistakes behind her back.
And I said if Yeeter violated his sister’s explicit wishes to not do certain things with the lad (violent video games and R-rated movies), then I think Yeeter’s done wrong. If Yeeter did something he thought she might not like, but didn’t violate her known wishes or tell Lil Johnny that sis was wrong for not allowing the lad to do those things, then less so.
I would disagree with your sneaking around point, though - kids sometimes get a feeling that something would be forbidden without explicitly knowing so, and sneak around to avoid having to ask permission for something which might be dodgy… I always thought it was better to seek forgiveness than ask permission when I was growing up as I was a lot better at saying sorry than saying please
Yeah, I’m leaning towards this opinion. When my brother and I used to visit our grandparents, we were allowed to eat things that weren’t allowed at our parents’ house, but we had to go to church without complaining. When our parents divorced, the rules at Dad’s house were more lax than the rules at Mom’s, particularly regarding what kinds of movies we were allowed to watch. Granted that was a different situation, since both sets of rules were laid down by our parents, but I don’t think it undermined anyone’s authority. At Mom’s house, we obeyed Mom’s rules. At Dad’s house, we obeyed Dad’s rules. At 16, the kid’s definitely old enough to understand that different households have different rules, and you should obey the rules of the household you’re in. If he’s not mature enough to handle that - if he tries to pull “But Uncle Yeeter lets me!” with your sister - then that’s a different story.
Shouldn’t Yeeter’s sister have a pretty good idea what Yeeter is going to allow? I wouldn’t expect my brother to be a surrogate me. I get the impression that Yeeter was asked to do a favor for sis. I don’t think she should criticize him (if she has) for the way that he did it. It’s not like he took the kid bar hopping.
“El trabajo de los padres consiste en criar a sus hijos; el de los tíos, en malcriar a los sobrinos.” - my friend Carlos.
“It is parents’ job to teach their children proper behavior; that of uncles, to teach improper behavior to their nephews.”
But never, ever, breaking the boundaries the parents have marked, as WhyNot said. SiL/Bro and me teach The Nephew different ways to use his coloured pencils; theirs more rigid, mine more creative; but I’m not going to give him anything with ink in it until they have deemed it appropiate. He has already (2.5yo) come to me with questions he didn’t think his parents would answer, and got a straight answer - but I’m not going to be introducing complicated subjects to the conversation.
Two kinds of kids come out of households with sheltering, control-freak parents.
The first type is the rebel, for obvious reasons. If this is your nephew, he’s already breaking his mom’s rules. He’s probably an expert at it. Nothing you have done has corrupted him further.
The second type has a ridiculously overblown image of the wisdom and power of their parents. They defer to them for everything, because they’ve always received their input before making a move, and they’re afraid to do otherwise. They will not so much as go for a walk without asking permission, and if they found themselves in a situation where an uncle offered to do something with them that they know breaks a rule, they simply wouldn’t do it.
The fear that you’re going to rat them out, or that they’ll be found out, or that their parents are right and that they aren’t ready for these big scary new things, and even just plain old-fashioned guilt is too crippling.
Therefore, since your nephew didn’t run out of the room screaming when you suggested watching Sarah Marshall, he is a type one. Congratulations, you had no effect on him and he’s already corrupted. Rest your conscience.
Thanks bubble pop. That’s how I feel as well. My sister has been a good influence on him there is no doubt about it, a stable home will do that for a person. But I think you have to be realistic about how you treat another person. She says he is immature, how will he grow up if he is under her thumb constantly?
Thanks for the responses everybody. I don’t think we have a definitive answer, but I can live with that. In the future I will try to abide by her rules, and if I foresee an instance I think would be “normal” but she doesn’t, maybe I can try to reason it out with her (that hard-headed sister of mine).
You may not have corrupted him, but you might well have let your sister down. She’s the one you need to talk to about this, not us.
Also, I didn’t see anything that indicated that sis is a control freak. Stricter than some, probably, but so what? So am I, and my kids are not wild rebels. The oldest, who has strayed farthest from what he was taught, is coming back to it now that he has kids to raise. I don’t think you can make that kind of generalization.
It sounds like she received him already damaged, yes? So the thing is, with an actual problem teenager, sometimes the best parenting strategy is to go back to treating them like a 2 year old until they learn the lessons they should have learned at age 2. Take away every last privilege so that they literally have a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, a mat on the floor and food and school supplies and that’s IT. Then you slowly reintroduce things like jeans and books and an ipod as they show you that they can handle them. As the kid shows that he’s learning to make decisions and take on a little bit of responsibility, you very, very gradually increase the decisions and responsibility he can take on.
Is it horrible and drastic? Yes. But if you’ve gone wrong somewhere, sometimes you have to start over. It sounds draconian, I grant you, but for parents faced with a kid who’s sincerely headed down the wrong path, they may choose to do this at home rather than in prison (which uses the same exact strategy, but affects things like future employment and puts you in with people who are even better criminals than you are so you can learn from them).
I’m not saying this is the level your sister is working at, this is just the most extreme end of the “under the thumb” strategy of parenting. It can be done less dramatically, with a kid who’s veering off path but hasn’t crashed yet. Sometimes, with some kids, “under the thumb” is the only effective strategy. bubble pop electric, I agree with you about the dangers of control freak parenting (although I’d add the caveat: “…of normal, functioning, behaving kids”), but I don’t think restricting restricted video games and movies is exactly “control freak” behavior. Those things have those ratings precisely because **many **parents find their content objectionable for their kids under 17 or 18. I think my tolerance of them makes me a more liberal parent than most, not that other people’s restriction makes them control freaks.
