Babysitting is often a kid's first job. Some get lucky and end up getting paid to mostly watch TV while the kids sleep, but sometimes things don't always go according to plan.
(Content edited for clarity).
That’s A Bit Awkward
“In high school, I met a nudist family at the local nude beach. They asked me to babysit, figuring I’d be comfortable with their lifestyle. No problem, easy money. Two boys 7 and 9, well behaved. The weird thing was that as soon as the parents left for their night out, the kids would start putting on clothes. By the time they got home, we were usually bundled up watching scary movies on TV. The parents always seemed a little uncomfortable with that, like I’d been perverting their kids into putting on clothes.”
That’s Some Party
“When I was a teenager I watched two kids up the street. The mother was single and had another single friend with two kids so I usually watched them all. I knew they went out to party – which was fine because they’d come home trashed and pay me more than I expected. What I didn’t know is how much they partied. One evening I went upstairs to get money for pizza. I found both moms in the bathroom snorting coke. The worst thing was when they offered me some despite the fact that A) I was about to spend the night watching their young children and B) I was only 14 or 15 at the time.”
A Liar And A Cheat
“When I was 13 I got a job babysitting for my neighbors. They had two little girls that were just the easiest kids to look after. The mom and dad were super nice people. Dad was a nurse that worked mainly nights and mom worked from home and would ask me over on Friday nights so she could go out and have some downtime. I quickly found out though that she was seeing other men.
The first night I went over there the mom informed me she would be home no later than midnight. Well, 4 am rolled around and I’m woken up by a noise out on the porch and see her hastily kissing another man and shooing him off. She apologizes for being late, pays me (was $5 short) and I go home to my mom whose pissed that she kept me so late. The same thing happened two more times. She’d promise to be home at midnight and come home at 3 or 4 in the morning. Every time with a different guy. And every time would stiff me a little of what I earned. My mom put a stop to it and called her out on cheating on her husband. They ended up getting divorced not long after that.”
Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That
“When I was thirteen I spent a summer babysitting the two most spoiled little brats it’s ever been my displeasure to come across. Their names were Mary and Kristin. Their mom was an awesome lady, but she tried to overcompensate for an absent father, who was apparently quite the abusive jerk to her. Luckily, the kids had no memory of this as she was smart enough to get out of that marriage before he could do any harm to the girls.
Anyway, things were fine for the first week or so–then one evening I told the eldest, Kristin, that she wasn’t to have more than the three cookies before dinner that I’d already given her (and I really wasn’t supposed to have given her those). Her response? To take off all of her clothing and run into the wall naked over and over, smashing her head into it hard enough to leave dents. As I watched her do this in absolute horror, I then noticed similar dents all over the walls. Within five minutes her little sister, Mary, had begun to do this, too. She’d do this till she passed out. Her kid sis, too.
Well, I let them do it. I wasn’t having it. Even at thirteen, I had no tolerance for that kind of behavior. So I sat down and read a book while they proceeded to destroy mom’s security deposit. I’m pleased to say that they were much less spoiled rotten by the time I moved on and quit watching them, and have turned into proper, healthy, lovely women. But my goodness… I will always see those two little brats as the naked, squawking little devils I once knew them as.”
Adventures In Babysitting
“When I was a teenager, I was babysitting for a family whose dog had just been hit by a car and had a broken leg. There was one kid, a 2-year-old little girl. I had been asked to take the dog out to pee a few times that night and he had to be leash walked. So while the little girl was happily watching TV on her parents’ bed, I took the dog out to the front yard. The people neglected to tell me that their front door locked on its own when it closed. I’ve never, ever seen a door on a house do that.
So when I turn to go back in, I’m locked out with a 2-year-old alone in the house. I go over to the window where I can see the kid inside and try to instruct her to open the door. She goes to the front door and from the window, alongside the door, I’m pointing and saying ‘open the door! go on, open the door!’ and she’s just not getting it. She breaks down crying hysterically because she doesn’t know why I’m not coming back in, then runs back to her parents’ bed to continue sobbing…I felt horrible.
The next door neighbor notices what’s going on and asks what’s up. He was kind of a shady guy. He was the last guy in the neighborhood to not sell his property for ‘flipping.’ It was a well-off neighborhood and he had the last tiny brick bungalow among giant re-builds. He had a lovely unmowed lawn growing around an old rusty car up on blocks… He said, ‘Oh I can break in for you, let me get my tools.’ So he proceeds to go up on the roof and completely remove their skylight (one of those plexi bubble-type ones) and drop himself down into the house. Luckily the little girl had fallen asleep on her parents’ bed by that point.
When the parents came home they felt awful for not telling me about the door, and I had to tell them they should get their skylight checked for leaks.”
Watching The Spawns Of Satan
“I used to babysit my neighbors’ kids. Actually, I babysat them for one night. That was all.
There were three of them, and the mother never really learned how to discipline any of them, as all three were literally the red-headed demon children you always hear about. I don’t remember their names now, but they were ages 12, 9, and 6. The 9-year-old boy, Mikey, was on some sort of medication for an anger problem. The 6-year-old boy, Matty, looked up to 9 and copied him, and the 12-year-old, the sister Molly, was more mild-mannered but tolerable alone.
It started off normal, Matty and Mikey are riding their bikes around the neighborhood and Molly and I are doing a puzzle. Eventually, the kids get bored, so we broke out their game of Connect Four. That went well for all of maybe five minutes. Mikey lost his game to Molly, so he throws the entire game set at her, and she continues to tease him which makes him angrier. Mikey continues to throw things around and I ask him to stop, that’s not nice. He yells ‘SHUT UP’ and tried to attack his sister.
So Molly runs away screaming with Mikey following behind. Matty decides to try and get involved but somehow trips and connects with Mikey’s foot as he’s running. Now I’ve got 2 kids beating each other up and one with a bloody nose. I decide to leave Mikey and Molly to it while I deal with Matty’s bloody nose here. I’m holding a crying, screaming Matty over a sink with hot water running and just let him bleed there while I’m trying to stay calm and have Molly and Mikey calm down. I did end up screaming STOP to the kids, and they stopped.
Back to Matty, who’s still crying over a bloody nose. I realize, great, this sink isn’t draining. That’s when Mikey goes ‘oh yeah that sink doesn’t work.’ Okay, awesome, now I’ve got blood to clean off the carpet, tile, and now have a sink full of bloody water. Of course, this is when Mikey decides to lose his mind and grabs a pocket knife from his mother’s end table and tries to stab Molly with it. Seriously? I take that knife from him, so of course, he comes back from the kitchen with another knife. Yay.
Well, at least he’s stopped trying to stab his sister. For the time being, he has resorted to stabbing all of his mother’s furniture instead. By now I’ve called the mom like 4 times, but she isn’t answering her phone. So I end up calling my stepmom, who’s retired military because someone’s going to die and, being 17 at the time, I’m starting to lose my cool. So, to recap, there is blood everywhere, holes in all the furniture, and a psycho 9-year-old with knives (I put up all the kitchen knives but he had some hidden in his room). So my stepmom runs over and sees exactly that. I explain to her the situation, and she ends up restraining Mikey while I clean up the mess.
Finally, mom calls back and I explain the situation to her as well, and she says calmly, ‘Yeah his medication must have worn off. Just tell him he’s done nothing wrong and give him what he wants.’ Forget that. I got paid $80, got out of there, and that was my very last time babysitting.”
A Creepy Proposition
“When I was 16, I babysat 2 little boys every day from 6 am to 6 pm for the summer. They had a single mom who was super cool and let me take the boys to the beach, pool, boardwalk, whatever. One day when I got to work, she informed me that her new boyfriend (who I never met or heard her talk about) was going to stay home all day because he was sick. Not sure why I had to be there too, but I wanted the pay and figured maybe he was too sick to watch the boys. About lunchtime, I fed the boys and we walked to the community pool.
We were there for awhile and came back to the boyfriend watching TV in the living room. This being the first time meeting the boyfriend, I introduced myself and sent the boys upstairs to change/shower. As soon as the boys left the room, the boyfriend asked me to take my cover-up and bathing suit off. Being young and naive, I laughed and said something stupid like, ‘haha what?’
He became more persistent at that point. I grabbed my stuff and told him I was leaving, calling the police and the boys’ mother. Looking back, I probably should’ve taken the boys, but I was freaked out and not thinking.
I left and never looked back. The police came and talked to me but when they got to the house the mom was there and he had left. The mom never believed me and didn’t pay me for the week. She accused me several times of making it up to get out of work. Why she would believe that dirtball she just met over her babysitter of several months is beyond me.”
How Do These Kids Know This?
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“I usually take care of three siblings. The younger ones, a girl and a boy who are twins and 9 years old, usually ask me the strangest questions. One day, the boy turned to me and asked me if I shaved my legs. I said that yes, I do. Then, the girl asked me if I shaved my private parts’ hair. I was so surprised by the question that before answering, the little boy just tells me that their mom doesn’t do it.
‘But,’ he continues, ‘she has her legs shaved because my dad does it for her when they take showers together!’
At the end of the night, it was a bit weird looking at their parents’ faces when they arrived.”
Crisis Narrowly Averted
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“I had a horrible heartstopping moment when babysitting my neighbor’s children. I must’ve been about 16, and the kids were 7, 5, and 3. We were playing the ‘hide the button’ game, and the youngest had gone into the open plan dining room, slightly out of my eyesight, and clambered on top of the fireguard. The fire was not on as it was summer time, but as she grabbed the marble of the fireplace, the whole fireplace came out of the wall and crashed heavily to the floor.
It was obviously not secured properly and was extremely dangerous. Now, the 3-year-old kid was crying her eyes out, and to this day I have no idea how she came through with only a scraped knee. That thing should have killed her it was so heavy. I could not lift it back up myself, so I enlisted the help of my brother who was around the corner.
Cue shaky phone call to the parents ‘erm…. your fireplace came off the wall and nearly crushed Holly, she’s okay but your fireplace isn’t.’
Their response?
‘Oh, we knew it wasn’t fixed on properly, it hasn’t been for 10 years, it’s on our to-do list.’
Stupid parents.”
A Bummer All Around
“I babysat for a very prominent family in my town – wife was a CEO, husband a lawyer. It was the best job ever! Two easy-going kids, $15 an hour (this was 15 years ago, so that was a TON of money), access to their pool, and an open invitation for my friends to come swim while I was ‘working.’
In between my first and second summer working for them, the parents divorced and the dad bought a giant house out in the country where I’d watch the kids sometimes. He made it very clear that his office and all the outbuildings were strictly off-limits. Okay, whatever, no problem. He had a ‘groundskeeper’ who was always prowling around, hitting on me, and acting like a total creeper. If the kids or I came within 20 feet of the (supposedly empty) stables, he’d shoo us away saying he’d spotted a dangerous snake, just sprayed for bugs or some other reason to keep us away.
I came home from school a few months after my summer gig was over and saw the dad’s mugshot on TV. He’d been busted as some kind of small-time kingpin, selling pills to dealers out of his house in the country and his ‘groundskeeper’ was a wanted registered offender.
It was a huge embarrassing ordeal for his ex-wife and their kids and they eventually moved away. My parents freaked that I was working so close to criminal activity and wouldn’t let me babysit anymore after that. It was a bummer all around.”
The Struggle Is Real
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“There were these two girls that I babysat for a few months while trying to make ends meet. The older one, as far as I could tell, was super nice but could never really stand up for herself. The younger sister, about seven, was evil. The final straw for me was had over a remote control. I went to the bathroom and as soon as I sat down I heard a sickening fleshy THUMP followed by gasping. I ran into the room and the older sister was on the floor with silent tears streaming down her face and the young one was laughing at her.
The little one looked at me and said ‘Look what I did! I kicked sister! I’m in charge of tv now!’ She giggled, waving the remote control around. I sent her to her room and helped the older sister up. She asked me to not get her sister in trouble because it happened all the time and she got attacked more if her sister got in trouble. When I confronted the mom about it she said ‘Oh that’s just how she is. She’s so spirited haha just ignore it.'”
Powder What?
“I was about 13-years-old and babysitting my cousin, who was probably 2-3 years old at the time. We were at his house and it was bedtime so I had him changed into pajamas and changed his diaper. Well, the kid starts crying hysterically. I’m a 13-year-old girl with no prior experience babysitting besides babysitting my cousin, and he never randomly burst into tears.
I was about to have a breakdown because nothing I did was right. So, instead of calling my aunt and bothering her on her night out, I called my mom. She answered and was telling me to try certain things, but then my cousin started yelling at me ‘POWDER,’ ‘POWDER MY WEENIE.’ I kid you not. This child was screaming at me to powder his weenie. So, then I was like ‘Alright. I guess I found out what he wants.’ My mom had put the phone on speaker so my dad could hear my cousin SCREAMING AT ME to ‘powder his weenie.’ They were laughing uncontrollably.”
Not What She Was Looking For
“While babysitting 3 kids, ages 4, 8, and 9, the 8-year-old decides to throw a steak knife in the air. The knife hits me in the forehead and drew a little blood so I went to look for napkins. That’s how I found the mom’s narcotics lab. I called my mom and she took care of the rest.
The mom fled to Florida and the kids went to their dad’s house.”
Just A Little Extra Fiber
“I babysat regularly as a teen. One night it was business as usual, I had just laid the kids down for bed until I hear crying in the bathroom. I go in and the little one had a poopy string of yarn hanging out of his bottom. I didn’t want to pull it in case it was wrapped around something so I’m trying to keep this kid calm and call his parents. They don’t answer. I call over and over with this kid freaking out. I finally call my mom, who calmed me down, took their number, and then chain called them until she got a hold of them. They rushed home and took him to the ER.
It was definitely my weirdest night. The string came out fine, by the way. Apparently, the kid liked yarn… a lot.”
He’s (Literally) Up A Tree
“I babysat a little boy who had severe emotional problems. One time he ran away while I was upstairs playing with his sister. He ran away to the park down the block, climbed a tree and refused to come down because ‘no one loved him’. I was young and didn’t think about calling the police or anything. I just sat at the bottom of the tree and literally talked him down. I convinced him that I loved him and wanted him to come home. His siblings also helped me by saying they loved him also. It was so scary.”