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[quote=Anonymous]DH and I are those relatives without kids. We want to have kids, but we are in our late 20s, I'm finishing up grad school and he is in a low paying job to pay his dues in his field so we are in no particular rush to start in the very near future without more financial stability.  A few things you said sound totally stupid--how can you leave a child at home when they are sleeping????  Even if they are a guy, I don't think my DH would ever imagine that this is something that is acceptable.

But helping with the hard stuff?  I have on occasion babysat a friend's or relative's kids and got my hands dirty with the "hard stuff" (diaper changes, feeding, soothing a crying baby, potty trips, trying to get a toddler to eat and then cleaning up the disaster on the floor, etc.) when they are in a real pinch and their childcare falls through, but absent that kind of situation I don't have my own kids--that's on you!  That's the great part about being childfree fun aunt.  You get to deal with the fun, cute aspects of kids and when they start turning into little shits you hand them back to their parents.  I especially feel this way if I only get to see them very rarely, like once or twice a year and I'm coming from out of town.

As far as bedtime and naps go, different relatives of mine have totally different philosophies on this.  I'm not pressuring them either way, because different kids, different parents, different needs, etc.  But I will say, that my SIL (since we see the kids very rarely because we live in different states) on special occasions will let her kids stay up as late as they want to--even as toddlers. This is not an everyday thing and usually it is a holiday, like New Years.  So while kids like their routine and different kids have different degrees of meltdown when it is disturbed, when you only see the kids very occasionally, sometimes it is nice to bend the rules to have a fun time with their aunt and/or uncle.  If I stayed at my SIL's house for a week I would never expect this to happen each day I was there.

Finally, everyone has shit going on in their life, and it gets old to hear excuses about why you cannot equally participate in family events and gifts.  Whether it's kids, having a demanding job, money problems, health problems, whatever, we all have stuff to deal with.[/quote]

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