Woman spaces off at niece's birthday, niece gets hurt, brother is mad, 'you're the adult.'

A gaggle of young kids running around requires constant supervision, otherwise, one of them is bound to get injured.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a woman asked if she was wrong for spacing off while her niece climbed and fell. She wrote:

"AITA for not paying attention to the kids at my niece's(4) birthday party when the other adults left the room without making me aware that I'll be alone with the 7 kids, which resulted in an injured kid?"

I (35f) love kids, always worked in childcare jobs. During gatherings of friends or family I somehow always ended up in the kids' room, helping the birthday boy and his friends assemble the new Playmobil fortress (because he asked me for help) or something like that. While the other adults eat cake around a table. Nothing wrong with them.

I just always wonder how I got myself sitting on the floor surrounded by tiny humans. But lately, my health took a nosedive. Burnout and other stuff. I'm no longer good with noise and crowds or focus. I'm on disability because I can't work. My family knows this. When my niece had her birthday I was invited but I had a really, really bad day.

I knew their apartment would be too crowded and noisy for me during the party, so I told my brother I had to cancel and come the day after. Discussing the reason, my brother convinced me to still come over for a little while, eat some cake and hug the birthday girl "to show up and not disappoint her." I made my limitations clear, that I can't help and that I might zone out. He said it'd be no problem.

When I came over, I sang Happy Birthday with them all, gave my niece her birthday hug and gift, and sat myself in the living room with them, eating cake. The kids were playing, I didn't know the guest parents, it was as overwhelming as I suspected, so I stuck to my piece of cake and zoned out a little.

I don't know how much time had passed, but the next thing I knew was that there was a scream from my niece and when I looked up, there were no more adults around, my niece had fallen down from a bar stool she had climbed and had a bloody knee (nothing more serious, luckily). When I got to her the other adults rushed in from the balcony a room over.

My niece got checked over, got a band-aid, and was already playing again 5 minutes after. But my brother asked me what happened and why I didn't prevent her from climbing. And when I told him I zoned out, he got angry and blamed me for her accident. It's a few days later now and I got several messages and calls from family, how irresponsible and AHole-y I am because I was not paying attention to the kids.

I thought it wasn't my fault, because I wasn't made aware that I was the only adult left in the room. But I'm beginning to doubt my point of view. Am I the AH here?

Redditors jumped on with all of their opinions.

Algebralovr wrote:

NTA. Not your kids, and you never agreed to be responsible for the kids.
The other adults are AHs for just assuming you’d be supervising all the kids. I’m guessing they all figure you will watch the kids because you work in child care? Time to stop staying in the room with the kids. When the adults migrate, you need to migrate as well.

And OP responded:

"I’m guessing they all figure you will watch the kids because you work in child care?"

I never questioned our dynamic because I loved being around the kids before I got ill. What you are guessing is part of the reason why I think my brother has a point. He knows me as the "babysitting everyone's kids" sister since I was 12. He might just not know better.

NotShockedFruitWeird wrote:

NTA, tell your brother to shove it. Ask him why he wasn't responsible enough to keep an eye on his own child.

Excellent_Broccoli76 wrote:

NTA what kind of terrible parents just dip out of a room with all their kids like that and don’t tell the last adult AT LEAST? You made your limitations very clear and they tried to take advantage anyway. Gross.

gillebro wrote:

NTA. You are not able to look after the kids right now. You made that clear. The other adults chose to ignore that fact. They left the kids unsupervised. They should be yelling at themselves. I also strongly suspect they aren’t showing you much respect.

OP is NTA here, she warned her brother and he still didn't listen to her.