Abby Connolly
At first, Danielle thought that the sitter was simply lying there listening to her audiobook until she tried texting her, asking to let their dog in from the backyard, and received no response. The sitter hadn’t even shifted on the couch.
This was when Danielle started having an internal back and forth. The sitter was asleep while she was supposed to be watching their son, but then again, he was also asleep.
But he is only ten months old, and they couldn’t tell if the babysitter would be able to hear him cry or not.
“Let’s just go home,” Danielle told her husband. “I’ll feel better if we go home.”
When Danielle and her husband walked through their door, they noticed it took the babysitter a while to get up from her snooze.
Danielle had assumed that the sitter would have kept the baby monitor volume at 100% while she slept so that she could hear the baby but later discovered that the volume wasn’t even on.
“So now I don’t know what to think,” says Danielle to her TikTok viewers. “Is it normal for your babysitter to fall asleep when they’re watching your kids?”
Danielle’s video generated over 230,000 likes and 16,000 comments. The comments section is filled with people of all ages weighing in; some are parents, some are experienced babysitters, some are just random people, etc.
Most commenters feel that it is normal and acceptable for a babysitter to doze off while the baby is sleeping, but that the baby monitor volume and phone volume settings should be turned all the way up.
Some commenters felt that the babysitter had no excuse and should not have fallen asleep, especially because the job was only supposed to be three hours long.
What side are you leaning towards in this babysitting debate? Is it okay to nap if the kids are safe, or should sleep be off the table?
