Sunday 25 February 2018

That weird relative


My husband and I have a friend group that includes one of his relatives. We've all been friends for years, but since we've had kids (toddler and preschooler) this relative has displayed some increasingly worrisome behavior.He's definitely a drunk, so all of these things get amplified when drinkingHe is very stubborn and has to be told multiple times if he does something we're not comfortable with.He has to tickle or touch the baby, excessively. He doesn't do it as much when I'm holding her possibly because he feels more comfortable with my husband? He will also try and tickle our oldest, and wasn't listening to her when she said stop. We put a stop to that and he hasn't tried to tickle her lately. We're big on body autonomy and used this as an opportunity to talk about consent.EVERY TIME there is a diaper that needs to be changed (we will go to an empty room when we're at a friend's house and change her on the floor) he casually shows up where you are. It feels like he's trying to watch.He has been at our house during bath time for our older preschooler and has gone into the bathroom (it's just off our kitchen), opening the closed door. It's all very casual, like he's just trying to talk to my husband. We've agreed no more bath time when he's around (or the door will be locked if he happens to drop by).We're in one room at a friend's house and we put on the tv for my oldest/made a blanket fort in the living room so she can chill for a minute and we can actually talk to our friends. You can't see the other room from where we are but it's just feet away so we can hear. He keeps on going in there. We're not comfortable with this so we keep on having to go and be in there too. We just kind of feel like we shouldn't have to babysit a grown man (but aren't willing to risk our kids safety). I know we seem a bit helicopter parenty here.At one point the baby falls asleep (yay) and I put her down on the large recliner. My older kid is sitting next to her, everyone is safe and happy, and I'm maybe 20 feet away. Well guess who goes in there and wakes up the baby! I go over there and he's patting her. Like why? Leave a sleeping baby alone!My husband and I have discussed this all and we've agreed that our kids are never to be alone with him. I don't want to accuse him of anything because there is nothing that he's actually done that's illegal. He's just... weird.I don't know if we should bring this up with our other friends (none of them have kids). It's just one of those "gift of fear" feelings. I also don't know if we should tell our oldest to beware, and how to bring this up in an age-appropriate way. She can be shy and we want to give her the tools to stick up for herself.TL; DR: Someone we see fairly often gives us the creeps around our kids, although we don't have any real evidence or obvious wrongdoing. We don't know if we should bring this up to our friends, and don't know how to best talk to our kids. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2BPnsdO

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