'AITA for purposefully excluding my nieces from the boat during our lake trip?' UPDATED

"AITA for purposefully excluding my nieces from the boat during our lake trip?"

My SIL and I do not get along. We actually used to be great friends in college and I in fact met my husband through her but she... changed. She’s now obsessed with being the “perfect” mom, sews all of her kids’ clothes, feeds them all organic vegan food, homeschools, etc. All of that is fine and I really don’t care what she chooses to do, but she is insanely judgmental.

Constantly makes passive aggressive comments about the fact that I didn’t have a natural childbirth, that my kid has been in daycare since he was 12 weeks, that I work really long hours, that we feed our son fast food (he really likes chick fil a and I see no reason why he can’t have this occasionally), and so many other things. Needless to say, I generally choose not to spend time with her.

My in-laws have a lake house that is not very convenient to where we live so we don’t go there often. However, my MIL requested that we all go for her bday since we are all now vaccinated and she hasn’t had all of us together in over a year. My husband decided to rent a boat for one of the days so he could go fishing with my son.

Of course my nieces wanted to go too and originally, we were fine with it. However, then my SIL said they weren’t allowed to go without her so she had to come too. Well, I really didn’t want to spend like 8 straight hours with my SIL in the middle of a lake on a small boat so we just told her the boat couldn’t accommodate that many people (although it was kind of an obvious lie).

My nieces had a meltdown bc they were missing out on a fun all-day boat trip. We ended up just going without them bc my SIL would not budge.

Well, it’s been a few weeks now and pretty much my husband’s entire family is united in their belief that we are gigantic AHs. They said we obviously lied to keep SIL off the boat and that we purposefully deprived our nieces of a fun outing. Apparently our nieces have also been asking why we don’t like them anymore.

I feel zero regret for excluding my SIL, but my nieces are good kids and we love them very much. Now I kind of feel like we were the AHs for making them feel like we didn’t want them to come along with us.

To be clear, I’m not judging my SIL at all for her decision not to allow her kids to spend all day on a boat without her. While I think personally it would have been safe (2 adults familiar with boat safety, 3 kids ages 5, 8, 9), I get why she wouldn’t be comfortable with that. My main issue was simply that I didn’t want to listen to her make jabs about my parenting and life choices all day.

Info: We didn’t tell our nieces that they could come, we told them that they had to get permission from their parents and then my SIL told us no, unless she also comes along.

I have had many (many) talks with my SIL over the years about the way she talks to me and she always apologizes, claims she doesn’t realize she’s doing it, and tells me she will try to be more conscious.

She’s usually good for a few weeks at best, but then will start in again with the passive aggressive remarks. None of what she says is straight up mean, it’s just a constant barrage of “well of course, I don’t judge you, but I’ve just read a lot about food dyes in those snacks and I’m just concerned about (my son). I would never dream of giving those to (her kids).”

A lot of people have commented that it’s weird/inappropriate to rent a boat that isn’t intended for the whole family during a family vacation. My husband is a pretty quiet, introverted guy and spending a week straight with his (very loud and large) family is draining for him. It’s normal behavior for him to do his own thing during vacations with his family.

His family knows this and doesn’t usually mind bc they are so used to it. As far as I know they aren’t upset that he rented a boat for the day, it’s bc we didn’t bring our nieces along.

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

jam_and_ham said:

ESH She is pushy and judgmental. So obviously not a saint here. You told an obvious lie so you could get out of actually articulating your feelings like a grown up. Also if you told the girls that they could go this was probably a huge blow to their weekend. You shouldn’t tell kids yes to things if you can’t back it up, and if you have to cancel telling an obvious lie makes things 1000% worse.

Edit: I am still sticking with ESH. You told your nieces to ask for permission, that implies that if their mom says yes they can go on the boat. Mom said yes, just with a qualifier you didn’t like but honestly it’s not that out of left field.

You then told a lie that was obviously a lie so you could get out of taking them. Yeah it sounds like this woman is annoying but I still think you did not handle this situation appropriately. At the end of the day though it’s a boat and not the end of the world.

Clean-Champion-5257 said:

NTA Confession time: I was once like your sister-in-law. I home schooled my kids, healthy food, brain charging outings, and I spent a lot of time explaining to other people why I thought my parenting choices were... This is where two paths diverge in a wood... I thought I was justifying my out of the norm parenting choices. People heard "I'm a way better parent than you" 🧐🧐

One of my sisters actually came right out and told me to shut up and quit it! If my parenting choices were so good, then I didn't need to shove stats and studies and everything else in other people's faces to prove it! If I was that insecure, I needed to either get my head on right or send my kids to public school and get over it, but quit looking for affirmation from everyone in the world. 😲😉

So I got my head on right and doubled down on my choices and quit bugging other people about it. It was a wonderful lesson in humility

TheBaddestPatsy said:

NTA. As a vegan, don’t bring a vegan fishing! I can’t think of a worst set-up for a bad outcome.

And Consistent-Leopard71 said:

NTA. You SIL sounds insufferable, it's completely understandable that you did not want to be stuck on a boat with her all day. There was nothing wrong with having the 1 day for just your nuclear family. As for the nieces asking why you don't like them anymore, I wouldn't be surprised if they were prompted to ask by their mother.

Edit from OP:

For those of you suggesting that I call her out on her behavior while on the boat, or that I turn the boat around bc of her behavior, I’m not going to be outright mean to her in front of her young kids. I get that being passive aggressive about not including her on the boat is not the most mature thing to do, but I was trying not to cause too much drama/conflict in front of our nieces (obviously didn’t work though).

They love their mom, who is actually a very good and kind mother to them. Yes, she is super controlling of their lifestyle but honestly, they’ve never really known any differently. She is absolutely a judgmental nightmare to me, but I’m not trying to ruin their image of her.

Maybe when they’re older they will pick up on her passive aggressive BS to others, but for now they’re still little and think mommy is the best. I’ve never confronted my SIL in front of our kids, and don’t ever plan to. That being said, I definitely could have talked to her more honestly about the boat in private and seeing how upset our nieces are now, I’m kind of wishing I had just sucked it up and let her go.

She later shared this update:

I showed this to my husband and we both decided that we are the AHs bc our love for our nieces is more important than the fact that my SIL is a judgmental jerk. Someone suggested that we plan a special outing with my nieces so we have decided to call my SIL, apologize for hurting our nieces, and discuss an outing for all of the kids. Thanks for the judgment all, it actually did help me reach my decision!