I’m not a parent but I need advice from parents to help my nephew when he comes over.

So my nephew is 4 and he has severe separation anxiety. He freaks out the second he realizes one or both of his parents have left him somewhere even if it was planned and he was excited about visiting whoever he was going to be left with.

At day care he constantly demands the day care worker text his mom to see when she will pick him up or begs to talk to her on the phone. If his dad leaves the house but his mom is still there he will throw a tantrum that he was left out.

When he and his siblings come to my house it is the same thing, only with me his mom kind of encourages the behavior. How she parents is none of my business, but when she drops them off at my house she will literally tell him that if he wants to call or text her that i will let him and that if I don’t then he just needs to tell her and she will “handle it”. Of course I will text her for him or call her for him if he asks, but he asks literally every 5 to 10 minutes and refuses to join in any of the fun things I planned for him and his siblings to do with me while his parents get a date night.

We can’t watch a movie, do arts and crafts, play games, or anything else because he will throw a tantrum and demand to call his mom every few minutes. His older siblings just sit there and beg him to calm down so they can have fun and he will then either flip the boardgame, tear up the art/craft they were working on, or throw his food in the floor if I don’t call his mom fast enough or she doesn’t answer her phone.

I watch him and his siblings once a week usually and it has gotten to the point where I dread the 4 hours he will be there. The siblings are great and so much fun but he just seems to get worse every visit. Last week he broke a decorative plate that was my great grandmother’s and when I put him in time out all he did was shriek non stop for 10 minutes straight.

I ask my sister in law for advice but all she ever says is that I’m not a parent so I don’t understand then tells me to just call her faster. Which I get, but I feel like I’m either giving into his anxiety instead of helping it or making it worse because I can’t distract him from it.

Nothing I have tried works and I feel like a horrible aunt. He didn’t have this problem when he was 2 and under and we all used to have so much fun when they came over. I miss that.

Does anyone have advice for how I can help him through this when he is with me? Not even his favorite movie can distract him from begging to call his mom and I’m lost for ideas... and I don’t want any more family heirlooms destroyed.