I was hoping to get some advice on a delicate family matter.
Background: I have a SIL (my husband's sister) and a little niece who live nearby. We never saw much of them because SIL's husband was controlling and abusive, he kept her pretty isolated from her side of the family. He's since moved out and she's started divorce proceedings.
Now my SIL wants to spend more time with us, which is great! She has indicated that she'd like to come over to our house periodically to chat- I think she feels safer not socializing in her home where her husband has access and pops in frequently to keep an eye on her. My husband and I are absolutely fine with this.
The problem is that my SIL has been dropping a lot of hints that she'd like us to play a major role, especially when school lets out in the summer, as babysitters. These hints will probably become outright requests in the coming months (last year she asked another family member to quit their job and watch my niece for free).
This is an issue because a.) my niece is a small child and we are childfree people who don't feel comfortable being responsible for small children and b.) my niece has some emotional/behavioral issues that she's seeing a therapist for, but it makes it extra challenging. She's like a little tasmanian devil when she visits our house, terrorizing our pets and demanding that she be the center of attention at all times. She has tantrums and hits, threatens to hurt people, that sort of thing.
The biggest factor though, is that she has a habit of accusing adults of hurting her on purpose. She's being doing it for a couple of years and accused my husband of hitting her in the face last time we visited with her, even though we were all watching them and nothing of the sort happened. She hit him in the face and he told her firmly to stop, which is when she came to me and made the accusation. She keeps a perfect poker face and insists it's true, it's very convincing. It's also very scary! I don't want the police on my doorstep because my niece told someone that we abused her! My SIL brushes it off as Not A Big Deal when I bring it up...but yeah, it is a Very Big Deal in my book.
We don't want to drive them off- we'd like to support them both by spending time together as a family. We just don't want to be pressured into babysitting. At least not now- we're fine watching well-behaved older kids that we can play a game or watch a movie with, you know? My little niece just isn't there yet, but we hope she will be someday soon.
So, any advice on how to approach this without coming off like we're just terrible people who don't want to be supportive?