Babysitters from Hell

[ChibiHorsewoman]

[color=#9933ff][font=lucida calligraphy]Now here's a thread I don't think we've had yet.

Being a single working mother of a toddler I have some interesting stories about the people I had watching my daughter before I got lucky and found the daycare provider I have now. Being a member of a message board with a combination of parents and young adults I'm sure that there is a multitude of horror stories. Either about a person you hired to watch your kid or maybe a babysitter who your parents hired to watch you.

I'm positively horrid at starting things out anyways, so I'll just tell you all a few of my own and get it over with.

Back in 2005 when I was re-entering the workforce I started working A shift instead of B shift and needed to find someone to watch my then nearly 1 year old daughter. I found this one woman through a co-worker of mine who after watching my daughter for one day found out that she wasn't allowed to watch children under two years by New York State Law because she wasn't properly liscensed. So she gave me the name of another woman. I went to go see her, everything seemed fine. I had my daughter there for a week and a half maybe two weeks when one morning I go to drop my daughter off and no one answers the door or the phone.

It was like the woman and her family had just up and dissapeared. I ended up having to turn around and drive two towns back to where I live and leave my daughter with my mom then drive to work and get my pay docked. I still don't know what happened. That could explain why I get a little nervous when the woman who has my daughter now doesn't answer the door right away... Gods now I feel paranoid.

So anyone else?[/color][/font]

[joshdude89]

Well, I guess I was lucky growing up. After I was in first grade, I never had a babysitter. My parents started leaving me alone for short periods of time when I was about 7 or 8, but it wouldn't be for longer than 2 hours. After a while, they would feel comfortable leaving me alone for longer periods of time. Of course, I feel that by them doing so, I felt more responsible and possibly matured earlier than others. I certainly feel that the latter is true. Course, I don't know how good of an idea it was, but nothing bad ever happened...so I guess it didn't hurt either.

[SaiyanPrincessX]

[SIZE="1"]I can't remember any bad baby sitter experiances, but I do remember a daycare incident. I was probebly 5 or so. The place was called Palo Alto, in Phoenix, AZ.

Anyway, I had this stuffed dog I always had with me(which I still have), and for some reason the women working there woudn't give it back. I remember it was nap time, it was dark, I was crying and the women was holding my dog and she had her foot on the chest of another kid holding him down, while he was crying.

Apparentlly this women shouldn't have been working with kids.[/SIZE]

[SunfallE]

[COLOR="DarkRed"][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"]I've never had a babysitter from hell, but kids who were hell to babysit? I've done that one before. Probably my favorite was one family who neglected to tell me that their youngest son quite literally gets beyond hyper if he's given sugar. Within fifteen minutes of having a cupcake, that kid was bouncing off the walls. It was terrible. And to top it off, he wouldn't mind anyone, not even his parents. By the end of the evening he had tossed dishes around and broke them while having a temper tantrum and had to literally be locked in his bedroom to get him to settle down. I didn't find out until later that no one would babysit for this couple because of their out of control kid. Naturally I never accepted another job to babysit for them again. [/FONT][/COLOR]

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Can't even remember having a bad babysitter, as growing up I was either taken care of by my grandmother when my parents were at work, or the teenage daughters of neighbours of ours who all seemed to be perfectly nice girls, though seeing as I was only four or five at the time I can't say that with complete certainty.[/SIZE]

[Korey]

I had about 2 to 3 babysitters that I can remember. All of them were teenage girls that lived in the neighborhood and whose parents were friends with my parents, so it was like going to spend the night there. All of them were pretty cool with me and my siblings....so I guess I'm not much help in this department.

Actually my mom does do Daycare now. Since I was 8 actually. She is just plain awesome at taking care of kids. My mom has had some of these children since they were babies and has watched them grow up into the coolest kids. Her first kid that she took care of and I were buddies. He was the oldest and the only child in his family and I was the big brother he never had. He was my buddy and I was his. When he moved when he was about 5 I was devastated. I still talk to him and it's hard to believe now that he is in middle school. It's funny that these kids come to your house and you don't think you would get attached to them, but you do. I have so many memories and experiences with the kids that my mom takes care of. Of course I get little to no privacy at my house, but that comes with the territory. I would hate when my mom retires and doesn't have 4-6 little kids in her house.

[Sloth Girl]

[SIZE="1"]Hm, well I can definitely say I've had some bad babysitters. Sadly enough, most of them were related to me. The worst probably being my grandmother who is possibly senile and insane in my opinion. One thing she did, I know that I will never forget. Since we arrived at her house 6am and didn't leave until 6pm, we got a long day to spend with her. One morning around 9am, I had just woken up not too long ago and I was sitting on the couch watching TV with my brother and cousins. I made some kind of remark that was completely innocent for someone 7-years-old. My grandmother didn't see it that way and then told me to take a three hour nap on the lounge chair and I wasn't allowed to get up until she said so. I slept for maybe 5 minutes and rolled over and by God, I've never felt a switch like that before. Every time I moved, I would get beat. And my cousins and brother got to go eat breakfast and have ice cream.

And I know I've had plenty of bad children. Only two weeks ago I believe, I had 3. The 6-year-old got hooked on playing Vice City and wouldn't give the controller back so I just left him there. The 4-year-old was actually being pretty good. The 1-year-old who is nearly as big as his 6-year-old brother ate everything. And I mean everything. After he left and I managed to find everything they ripped off of my table, I realized that half of my candle was missing. Which is very odd because everytime I looked at him, he was sitting there with nothing in his hand. And then they all ate my pizza and my chicken. It's hard to keep track of all of them. Especially when I'm trying to clean my house at the same time.[/SIZE]

[Vicky]

[SIZE=1]I never had any bad experiences, but if I look into deeply, I could find some now. Mostly, my big brother used to babysit me, the eldest one. He was pretty cool, he just let us do whatever we wanted and would randomly disappear upstairs for a few minutes and come back down. He'd either sit there and do nothing, laugh, or be really... hyper...

Of course we never paid any attention to this. He's a very very awesome guy, never hurt anyone, pretty smart, best brother in the world...

Unfortunately during the years he was babysitting and even nowadays he's been on drugs. [I]That[/i] explains a lot. He still doesn't do anything bad and is probably nicer on the drugs, haha, but it's just kind of worrying that the I was babysat by a druggie O_o;;

At least I know where to get my fix if I ever need one...[/SIZE]

[ChibiHorsewoman]

[color=#9933ff][font=lucida calligraphy]For the earliest part of my life my mom stayed at home and did part time jobs because that's what the whole stu\ipulation of adopting children said. But I've had a few interesting people watch my brother and I when we were younger. Here are two of the most memorable.

The summer I was going on eight and my brother was going to be five we had this one babysitter who had three kids of her own. They got away with murder (the two year old used to bite me and I'd get in trouble for it.) She once told us there wasn't any milk for breakfast and sent my brother and I outside and then fed her kids. :animeangr And she was a real well you know when it came to extended time outs. This was before someone figured out that you shouldn't give kids a time out longer than their age in minutes. She'd have us (sometimes one of her kids, but mainly my brother and I) stand in the corner for like twenty minutes or lay down for the same amount of time. And don't even get me started on the horror movies and soap operas that were on instead of kid's shows.

The other one we had seemed just fine at first. It was the summer that my brother was turning eight and I was turning eleven. My parents interviewed this woman, she had a daughter and wanted to be able to bring her. They said fine. And from June to the beginning of July things seemed fine, but then she started to come later and later. Then she just stopped coming all together and I ended up having to watch my brother! That was so not cool.

My brother and I also like to tell people that we got kicked out of day camp one year. That's not completely true. Yes sometimes there were problems, but my mom actually pulled us out of a day camp because the conselors didn't keep a good eye on the kids. My mom was able to walk right in a few times and take me to my psychologist appointments without anyone asking who she was and considering the cost of day camp, she just got fed up and we got taken out of there. I was glad for that because some of the kids were way too snobby.[/color][/font]

[Rachmaninoff]

Well I never had babysitters from hell. But then my mom's parents live in the same area and my grandmother would always watch us when my parent's needed someone to keep an eye on us. And like lots of grandmothers, she spoiled us rotten every time she watched us. Making cookies, telling us stories and letting us play video games instead of studying when we got older. lol

I think it drove my mom and dad a little nuts at times, but I remember how excited we'd get when grandma came over and mom and dad left. We all knew that meant fun instead of doing chores, homework, etc.