Adventures in Babysitting

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This isn't just for women but I wasn't sure where to post it.

Share your weird and otherwise bizarre experiences with babysitting or caring for other people's kids.

I have many. I'll put them in separate posts to avoid TLDR.


When I was about 17 I worked at a kids' summer camp and got to know two little girls named Amy and Tara. I always called them Tamey and Aira because it made them laugh.

Their dad usually dropped them off and collected them afterward, but I'd met the mum too.

One time they asked if I could babysit. The dad picked me up from home and drove me to their house. The mother showed me the kids' toys and said she was leaving a frozen pizza I could pop in the oven when they got hungry.

The first weird thing was she left the pizza on a thin white cutting board, and I'd never seen a cutting board like that before so I didn't know what it was. I put the cutting board and the pizza in the oven together, and melted the cutting board all over the place so it stank like burnt rubber. I was ashamed and scraped it out into a plastic bag which I hid in my purse and took home with me when the dad drove me home, as if he wouldn't have smelled it or figured out their oven was ruined and the cutting board gone.

That's not the weirdest thing though.

While playing with the girls I heard a weird noise and couldn't figure out what it was. I asked the girls and they said it was their infant sister in her cot (???!?! !)

I had no idea they had an infant sister. The parents never told me about her and didn't leave any instructions about feeding or changing her, and hadn't even shown her to me when I arrived. It was like a horror movie walking into a dark bedroom to find a writhing baby under my care, whom I knew nothing about.

There's no way that's on me. They were negligent not to mention this baby in any way. I hadn't even seen baby toys or baby bottles in the house, so it felt like a surreal joke and I was very freaked out that the kid could have choked or died of SIDS in my care, and I wouldn't have even known if she hadn't made that sound.

Story 2:

My cousin asked me to babysit his kids and his friend's kids, at the friend's house. I didn't know the friend but all the children were friendly and we had a fun night.

I heard a strange noise and turned to find a man with a rifle coming up the basement stairs. He was glaring at me.

I nearly had a heart attack.

Turned out that he lived in the freaking house as the downstairs roommate of my cousin's friend. No one bothered to tell me he lived there or that he had a hunting rifle.

Likewise, no one told him there'd be a teenaged girl rummaging around their kitchen.

He said he nearly shot me.

^ That must’ve been really scary!

It’s crazy about the infant sister, too. I would've freaked out!

The strangest experience I had with babysitting occurred over a summer when I was 16 or 17. I knew the family because they went to our church. They had “issues” to put it mildly. They had really poor hygiene which resulted in a dirty, stinky house, and they had rats…big ones. The rats weren’t even afraid of people. One ran into my foot once, and it was so big it felt like a cat. *shudders* Thankfully, I was wearing shoes. I genuinely wanted to help this family out. They weren’t treated well by folks in the congregation because the understanding of mental health issues was extremely poor. Rigid, conservative attitudes were the norm. People just needed to “try harder.” I babysat there rather than at my house because the parents went to work at 6 in the morning, and the kids needed to sleep in since a regular bedtime was not enforced. I took them outside and to the park as much as possible to get out of the house.

Once, the mother got the delusion that all the elders in the congregation wanted to sleep with her. (It was just one delusion among many.) I feel mean saying it, but she had poor hygiene, wasn’t attractive, and had an abrasive personality, so I really doubt that there was any truth to it. I stood up for her, though. On one occasion, a particularly stupid elder was complaining about her to me although he wasn’t supposed to. I tried to stress the fact that she had “problems” and that serious disorders AND abuse ran in her family (she was open about it), but it did no good. She was eventually disfellowshipped. They consistently seemed to think that everyone has the same ability. It's hard to describe what I mean, but I suppose it's a (very) conservative worldview.

Anyway, it wasn’t too long after that that the house was condemned. The kids ended up having problems, too. Well, they already did when I babysat them. It was a really sad situation all around. The family should’ve been reported which could’ve resulted in them getting help, but I had no concept of that at the time.