I (27F) I am currently having complications with a friend that we will call Karen (28f) for this situation.

So some context on the situation is I have a lot of kids, and I mean a lot (3 weeks from due date currently) I’m also typically our friend groups trusted babysitter when anybody has something come up with their daycare. So I’m pretty used to an array of different personalities when it comes to kids in my everyday life.

Myself and this friend have two very different parenting styles, I’m more communicative and personally don’t believe in corporal punishment as redirection/explanations make more sense to me. She is more of the southern style of raise her voice, if you don’t hear her the first time, you’re gonna feel her hand on the second.

That being said, I have finally came to the conclusion of I just can’t watch her oldest kid anymore. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more angry child before in my life, and I’m by no means blaming the child for his temperament, but it’s just not something that I can personally handle anymore. He doesn’t follow any sort of directions, even simple ones, without lashing out violently. He goes out of his way to physically hurt anything without any warning and I mean anything. The cat, any child, big kid, adult, the freaking house plants. The scary part is he always laughs and then follows up with name calling, swearing, or a lovely shrieking sound that would put any coyote to shame. I know this is really messed up to say, but it’s like a rerun of the orphan Movie irl when dealing with this kid. Yesterday he walked up to me asking for a snack and before I could even lift my head from washing dishes he slapped me as hard as he could. It took everything in me to keep from crying because that would obviously freak out my littlest babies in the house. I put him in my spare room (time out) away from the other kids so I could not only take a breath, but reduce the amount of damage that he was currently doing in that moment. Mind you the situation is completely foreign to me because I can’t even count how many kids I’ve watched over the years and I’ve never found myself afraid of a kid.

After the incident I called Karen and told her she needed to immediately come get her son and make other arrangements for him, but I could handle her youngest still to help her save money. She went on to say he’s “really not that bad” and she doesn’t think it’s fair that I’ve never said I wouldn’t watch anyone else’s kids. After months of having patience, I finally snapped and said well none of our other friends have kids that act like a literal demon. I asked her if he really wasn’t that bad then he had slapped me in the face and why was he currently tearing apart my spare bedroom? If he was so easy to handle then why do I have to constantly be in fear that he’s gonna hurt not just me but another child in my care. She said she couldn’t leave work and I needed to learn how to better manage the kids in my care. I was honestly so shocked and frustrated that I got on Facebook and messaged the father of her kids to come get them even though I know it wasn’t his day. I tried to call her again to let her know he was coming to get them, but she wouldn’t answer her phone for myself or him. At 8pm that night (4 hours after she was supposed to be off) she showed up at my house looking for her kids. I told her they were with their father and her son‘s behavior has been reported to dad. Now she’s saying I potentially ruined her court case for primary custody because dad had to pick up the kids and realized she was MIA with no idea that he even had the kids for hours. I told her it wasn’t my fault and she had two breaks she could’ve called either of us back on, but chose not to.

So Reddit, AITAH?