Babysitting: It’s Literally In The Name

I used to do some babysitting and nannying work as a teenager for extra cash. Most of my regulars were lovely, but you get the occasional odd one.

I was a very popular babysitter in the area and would happily work with very short notice, so I regularly got calls from parents who had been given my number, needing a babysitter within a few hours. This meant that when I got a call from a parent of a classmate of one of my regular’s kids needing a babysitter that evening, it wasn’t that surprising and I happily accepted.

This referral came from one of my favourite regulars, so I had no initial concerns.

First red flag was that they had a huge Rhodesian Ridgeback dog, which was rather protective of his house, but I’m good with dogs, and we got on pretty well after a small introduction. Unexpected but fine. (Please warn people if a rather protective dog is wandering the property!)

It was about 5 PM at this point, so I went through the usual asking for rules, does their nine-year-old son need dinner, bedtime, etc. Essentially, the answer was, we’ll be back around 2 AM, there are zero rules, the kid will pick something from the cupboards, and to just let him have whatever he wants.

No bedtime, no rules on what shows he could watch

The nine-year-old wanted to watch South Park, which is why I checked this rule repeatedly, but apparently, it was all good for him to binge-watch that all evening.

Relatively uneventful evening, kid was surprisingly well behaved considering they had no boundaries… until the parents got home.

The parents get back around 2 AM, nine hours after they left. Then the wife went upstairs and came back with a baby.

I had not been informed that there was a baby upstairs the entire time I’d been there; they’d just shut it in its bedroom and not thought to tell me because it wouldn’t need to do anything, so… no big deal?

What the h***!

Even if they don’t need to do anything (what baby sleeps through nine hours without a peep, I’d genuinely heard nothing all night and I was on alert knowing the dog was around as I didn’t 100% trust it), if there was an emergency I wouldn’t have known to get the baby out of the house!

Turns out they didn’t want to tell me because they were concerned I’d charge extra for two kids. (I didn’t, it was flat rate up to three kids.)

I just took my money and left, told my mum who worked for the school their kids went to (there were other safeguarding issues it turns out, so this went on the reported list there).

Not long after, they left the country with no warning.

This isn’t even the only time a parent has surprise-dumped their baby on me. Apparently, I just look like I’ll be cool with it!