She Doesn’t Like To Babysit Boys Over The Age Of 10 For Safety Reasons, So When She Thought A Family Lied About Having Young Sons, She Just Walked Out On Her Babysitting Gig
If you are or were a babysitter, did you have a certain list of rules or criteria for your clients?
One teenager recently walked out of a babysitting gig because she was certain the mother lied about her sons’ ages.
She’s 19 and has babysat for families in her neighborhood for over two years. A week ago, she was contacted by a family who got her name from another one of her clients, and they asked if she could babysit for them.
Right away, she told the family she had a policy where she only babysat boys ages 10 and under but didn’t have an age requirement for girls. She does this for safety reasons and doesn’t feel safe babysitting boys around her age or larger than her.
The family said they had two boys, ages 9 and 10, so she agreed to watch them for a night while the parents got to some important plans. On the day she was due to babysit, she arrived at the family’s house, was let in by the dad, and was immediately taken aback.
“To my surprise, the boys looked like no 9 and 10 [year-old kids] I’ve ever met,” she recalled.
“One looked 12, and the other looked like he could be 15 or 16. Both of them were taller than me, and the older one even had some visible facial hair. All that was going through my head was these parents lied to me about the ages because I lead with my rule, and they lied to me just so I would accept [the job].”
When the mother greeted her, she asked to speak to her privately, which was when she told her she would not babysit her sons and explained why. The mother was furious and sarcastically asked if she needed to see their birth certificates as proof. She figured that wasn’t a bad idea, so she told the mom that she would like to see some kind of proof to confirm the boys’ ages.
The mother then stormed off and yelled some obscenities, which prompted her to leave the house then and there.
Drobot Dean – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Later, she got a call from her client, who recommended her to that family. She found out about the incident and was upset.
“She said maybe one [son] was actually 11, but the other was truly nine and that they just look like they were so much older,” she explained.
“To be fair, the mother was tall, and the dad was huge. It’s actually the reason I asked to confront the mother and not the father. But the boys weren’t just tall, [they] also looked older face-wise. Babysitting two strange boys who were both taller and clearly so much stronger than me doesn’t feel safe, which is why I have the age rule in the first place.”
While she felt like canceling her babysitting gig that day was justified, she’s beginning to feel guilty, as the boys were younger than she thought. She also feels bad that she messed up those parents’ plans and embarrassed her other client.
Should she feel bad for walking out of the gig, or were her actions valid?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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