Babysitting is typically the first job many young individuals have. Watching someone else’s child is a great way to learn how to cook, clean, and run a home. However, these babysitters didn’t expect to leave the job with trauma, too! From creepy children to pretentious parents, these babysitters share the terrible experiences they’ve had on the job. Content has been edited for clarity.
“The Father Wanted To Sue Me For Damages”
“I was previously a babysitter for two rowdy boys with a single father.
The children were difficult to take care of, to say the least. The oldest child, ‘Jake,’ was five years old. Jake had serious anger issues, all of which he took out on his three-year-old brother, ‘Alex.’
It was a constant effort to try to get Jake to stop antagonizing his little brother.
One afternoon, I picked up the children from school and was unpacking their bags from the car at home. Suddenly, I heard the children begin to fight over something.
I was busy with their bags at the moment, so I called over to both children to behave themselves.
Seconds later, I heard a loud ‘thud,’ followed by a blood-curdling scream from Alex.
I dropped the bags and ran over to Alex. He was clutching at his eye as blood streamed down his face.
Alex hysterically cried, ‘My eye! My eye!’
I quickly scooped him up into my arms and sprinted into the house. I sat him down in a chair and ran into the bathroom for toilet paper to stop the bleeding.
There was so much blood, it was almost hard to believe. It was everywhere. On the floor, all over our clothes, and on the furniture.
I calmed Alex down enough to get him to take his hand away from his eye so I could assess the damage. After I wiped some of the blood away, I could see there wasn’t any damage to his eye. Just a small, albeit deep, cut next to his left eye.
I cleaned Alex up, disinfected the wound, and let him pick out a Star Wars band-aid. I also gave him a juice box to help calm him down a little bit.
Then, I sent his older brother, Jake, to his room for fifteen minutes as a punishment.
Later the same night, I found out Jake actually had pushed Alex into the stairs leading up to the house. Alex fell, and he hit his face on the sharp edge of the first step. Only a little bit further to the right, and he might have lost an eye.
Once Alex was calm, happy, and watching cartoons, I sent his dad a message about what happened.
I explained, ‘There was an accident and Alex was hurt. It wasn’t serious, and you shouldn’t worry. I just wanted to let you know what was going on.’
No reply.
The dad was someone who always answered my messages immediately. If I didn’t text him back in a matter of twenty minutes, he would always send a follow-up message to ensure I responded to him.
I knew he was ignoring my message.
During the remaining three hours of babysitting, I got busy cleaning the house. I mopped the floors, wiped down the furniture, and changed Alex into a set of clean clothes.
I didn’t have an extra shirt for myself, so my bloody clothes had to stay on.
The children were pretty shaken up, so the rest of the night went by smoothly.
The boys were pretty shaken up so the rest of the day went by calmly.
When the dad came home, he was thirty minutes later than usual. The first thing he saw when he walked in was the blood stains on my shirt, then the band-aid on Alex’s face.
I explained, ‘There was an accident. Alex got hurt.’
The dad didn’t look the slightest bit upset. He didn’t ask me about the blood, either. He simply lifted the band-aid on Alex’s face and looked at the wound.
The dad sighed and said, ‘Oh well, it’s fine. You know how kids are.’
‘Did you see my message?’ I questioned.
‘No, I didn’t,’ the dad responded.
It was an obvious lie. No one goes three hours without checking their messages.
I knew the dad was suffering from depression, but his level of indifference to his own child disturbed me, more so than the accident.
I went home, took a shower, and cried. I couldn’t shake the image of all the blood, coming from the face of a sweet, innocent little 3-year-old as he cried his lungs out in panic.
To top everything off, a day after I quit this job, the dad threatened to sue me for ‘damages,’ which I can only imagine referred to as Alex’s injury. I never damaged anything in the home.
I screenshotted my message to him from the day Alex was injured, just to make sure there was proof of his negligence. Nothing ever came of it, but it was the cherry on top of a rather unpleasant cake.”
“Nobody Bothered To Listen To A Word I Said”
“I previously babysat for extra cash. This happened before the days of cell phones or even beepers.
A thirty-year-old friend of my stepmother had hired me to watch her five-year-old daughter while she had dinner with her soon-to-be ex-husband. They were working out divorce arrangements, and they needed some time alone without their daughter.
At the time, I was seventeen years old. I had experience as a primary care provider for my little sister, as well as for my mother during the last two years of her terminal illness.
When I went to the house to babysit, I parked my motorcycle on the front porch as I had been instructed to do. I met the mother as she walked out of the house before I even went inside. She handed me a list of instructions and the contact information for where she and her husband were going to be. She thanked me, hurriedly got in her car, and drove away.
I was already acquainted with the little girl, as I had known her since birth. We played games with toy dinosaurs, then had a tea party. I worked with her on her letters and reading skills before I sent her to take a bath and get ready for bed. At five, she was capable of bathing herself, so there wasn’t much I needed to do besides walk by the bathroom and check on her every so often.
As she was getting out of the bath, I heard the doorbell ring. I answered the door, only to find a police officer on the porch.
The officer said, ‘A neighbor called about a suspicious motorcycle parked at this house. A single mother lives here, and the neighbor never saw the mother leave.’
As I was about to tell the officer about how I knew the mother, the child came sprinting out of the bathroom wanting to know what was going on.
Before I was asked for identification or any other information, the officer yelled, ‘Get on the ground! Do you know this child?’
I quickly lay on the ground and tried to explain, ‘Yes! I am just babysitting for her mother!’
The officer dropped her knee into the middle of my back with all of her weight, and she completely knocked the wind out of me. She handcuffed me, and I offered no resistance whatsoever.
The nosy neighbor walked over to the door and said, ‘You got the creep! Oh my, what has he done to this little girl?’
Within a few minutes, there were police cars from three different jurisdictions at the house. I was still lying on my stomach on the front porch, and the little girl was whisked off to the hospital to be examined for assault. Not a single person even bothered to listen to a word I said.
I finally got an officer to pull the babysitting instruction sheet out of my shirt pocket and call the mother at the restaurant. I wasn’t released from the handcuffs until the mother got home, some half an hour after I was initially taken down.
The mom sued the neighbor, town, and police officer individually for small amounts, winning judgments against the neighbor and the town. As it turned out, the neighbor had been calling the police every time someone came over to her house for almost a year, constituting harassment. The officer was exempted from the lawsuit by the judge.
The mother bought me new tires for my Harley and gave me a pair of tickets to Disney World.
Not only was the mother and her daughter ‘family’ to me, but they were as safe as they could be. I was raised to protect women and children and grew up doing that very thing, caring for my sick mother and my little sister.
It was certainly one of the strangest babysitting experiences I ever had.”
“Don’t Feed Our Child Anything But Saltine Crackers”
“When I was fifteen years old, I was asked to babysit for my neighbor’s two-year-old kid. I told them I would be glad to watch their child, and a week later, I walked over to their house to babysit.
When I arrived at the house, they had another two-year-old there for me to watch. They didn’t tell me I would be watching two children, and I had never met the other child prior.
The parents explained, ‘We knew you wouldn’t mind watching two kids instead of just one.’
I was shocked, but I figured I would be receiving double the money.
I shook my head and replied, ‘Of course, it’s no problem. You guys have a good night.’
As my neighbors and their friends were leaving, the friends turned to me, gave me a bag of crackers, and said, ‘If our child gets hungry, don’t feed them anything but these saltine crackers. We’ll be back in three hours.’
Five hours passed, and the parents still weren’t home yet. Both children had naps and were changed, and I gave each child a cup of apple juice. They had eaten their snacks hours ago, and the children were both hungry again. I waited for almost another hour before giving each child a cookie.
It was almost seven hours later before both sets of parents finally arrived back home.
My neighbors paid me, but the other parents asked, ‘Did you feed our child anything besides the crackers?’
I shrugged and replied, ‘Well, yeah. You guys were gone for a long time, and your child was hungry. I gave both children a cup of apple juice and a cookie.’
A look of anger washed over the parent’s faces. They swooped up their baby and ran out the door screaming about me hurting their child. I was totally confused.
My neighbors explained, ‘The other child has diabetes. You really shouldn’t have fed him anything else.’
I asked, ‘How was I supposed to know, and why didn’t they tell me?’
The neighbor replied, ‘They thought you wouldn’t want to babysit for them if you knew.’
I sighed and responded, ‘I wish they would have told me. I know what kinds of foods people with diabetes can and cannot eat. My grandfather has it, and I would have known to feed the child something else.’
The other set of parents never did pay me. I refused to babysit for my neighbors again because of how they tricked me into watching a kid who could have gotten hurt under my car. I was lucky nothing awful happened.”
“The Situation Was Absolutely Terrifying”
“When I was seventeen years old, I babysat for a family with four children. The mom and dad went out one night, but only the dad returned, having dropped the mother off at work.
When the dad arrived home, it was late. The children were all fast asleep, and I was sitting in the living room by myself. Just my luck, the lights went out. A fuse had blown in the basement.
The dad grabbed a flashlight and asked, ‘Do you mind coming down and helping me? I just need you to hold the flashlight while I change the fuse.’
When we got downstairs, the dad said, ‘I can’t get the fuse in. Can you take a look and try?’
I handed him the flashlight, and he purposely dropped in. Now, we were in total darkness, and I couldn’t see anything. The next thing I knew, I felt the dad grabbing at me!
I pulled away and stumbled backward into the pitch-black cellar. I found myself standing against a wall, in total panic. My heart was pounding, and I could hear it in my ears. I was trapped. I didn’t know what to do except hope that I would somehow escape.
Meanwhile, the dad began to feel along the wall in the dark and found where I was standing. He touched my shoulder, and my fight-or-flight began to kick in.
I grabbed the dad square in the shoulders, and I shoved him back away from me. He stumbled and fell backward over a pile of stacked boards on the floor behind him. When he landed, I heard his head smash into the cement floor with a loud, ‘thud.’
I took it as my cue to find the stairs and escape since the dad was knocked out cold. I never babysat for the family again. In fact, I never spoke a word about the incident to anyone until I was twenty-six years old. Even then, I only told my mother.
The situation was absolutely terrifying.”
“I Never Felt Comfortable In The Home”
“When I babysat for my host family, I felt hungry very often. I was shy when I first moved to the United States, and I did not feel comfortable asking my host family to buy me more food or snacks. They felt as if they didn’t need to, either.
The host mother would almost always pay me late for babysitting her children, too. The family would go on trips during the weekends, and they would only leave two slices of bread and a bit of milk in the fridge. The parents would take the rest of the food with them, leaving me no money to feed myself or their children.
I would end up making ramen noodles or a ham and cheese sandwich for myself and their children nearly every day. I didn’t know how to cook well at the time, and I was also shy to cook in their house. The family never made me feel comfortable in their home, and they were very cheap and stingy people. Especially when it came to food.
One night, the family took me to a drive-in to watch a movie with them and their children.
After the movie, they talked about going to eat real food at a restaurant, and the wife said, ‘Don’t forget we have one more mouth to feed,’ as she glanced and rolled her eyes at me.
It was like I wasn’t even there, or the wife thought I didn’t understand English. Maybe she knew I understood and wanted me to hear her. I always felt like such a burden in the family, even though I used to eat very little back then and was shy most of the time.
Being hungry most of the time, getting paid late, and having an awful host mother was one of the most terrible babysitting experiences I ever had.”
“The Bathroom Was Completely Flooded”
“A couple of years ago, I was nannying for a thirteen-year-old girl. Her father was going out of town for three or four days on a business trip.
Being thirteen years old, the girl did not need the same kind of constant attention I would give a toddler. However, we still watched movies, took walks, and I drove her to guitar lessons.
Everything went great until twenty minutes before the father arrived home. Seriously, twenty minutes was all it took to ruin everything.
Before the girl went to bed for the night, we put a load of laundry in the washer. Since it wasn’t my house, I was unfamiliar with the type of washer and dryer the father had. Mine at home was very different.
The girl said she knew how to work the washer, so I trusted her. We put the laundry inside the washing machine, and she went to bed immediately afterward. Her father was going to be arriving home soon, so I stayed up and waited for him.
To my surprise, the washer kept going and going. The washer at my house only ran for forty-five minutes, and I thought it was strange this washer was taking so long. However, I knew the washer was a different model, so I thought nothing of it.
Twenty minutes before the father was supposed to arrive home, someone began banging on the apartment door.
I answered the door, only to find the downstairs neighbor standing outside.
The neighbor cried, ‘There is water dripping from your apartment, and it is leaking out of my ceiling!’
I ran to the washer, and the entire bathroom was completely flooded. I turned off the washer and cleaned up the water as best as I could. Then, her father arrived home.
The strangest thing was, the washer didn’t have any water on top. This meant the water had to of leaked from the bottom.
The father was extremely upset, but he understood I didn’t do anything wrong on purpose. He wasn’t angry at me but was instead angry at the situation.
The father notified the landlord, and to this day, they couldn’t identify where the leak came from.
I felt terrible about the situation, but I didn’t think I did anything wrong. It must have been a freak accident. I am a little paranoid about using the washing machine now.”
“I Was Severely Burnt On My Hands, Face, And Head”
“When I was twelve years old, I babysat often. The children I babysat the most were a nine-year-old and a one-year-old.
When I was babysitting these particular children, I made them chicken for lunch. I could easily heat the chicken up in the oven, but I had to light the oven with a match. When I struck the match and bent down to light the oven, it exploded into flames.
There was a gas leak.
I grabbed the one-year-old up, took the nine-year-old boy by the arm, and sprinted out of the house. Luckily, my aunt lived nearby where I was babysitting. I ran to her house with the children and told her what had happened. She ran down to the house and put out the fire.
I was severely burnt on my hand, face, and head. The children were one hundred percent unharmed.
I remembered calling the children’s dad to let him know what had happened, and he just kept asking, ‘Are you okay?’
I became furious and yelled, ‘Yes, I’m fine! You haven’t even asked about your own children!’
He replied, ‘I know they’re okay. You were with them.’
I continued babysitting for this family even years after this occurrence.”
“I Never Forgave Them For What They Put Me Through”
“When I was a teenager, I was tasked with babysitting a group of kids while their parents went to Mexico. The parents were going to be gone for two weeks, and they left me their Mustang in case I needed it to get around. I had just recently learned how to drive, and I only knew how to drive an automatic vehicle.
A Mustang was a manual-drive vehicle.
The second day I was babysitting, I received a call from the children’s principal.
The principal explained, ‘Do you know where the children are? They skipped school, and they are nowhere to be found on campus.’
I had to go find the children, and I couldn’t just call their parents to tell them what was going on. They were in Mexico and I was in Michigan. Even if I did call the parents, there wasn’t anything they could do.
That afternoon, I had to teach myself to drive a stick shift on my own. It was absolutely terrifying, and the circumstances of why I had to learn to drive the car weren’t great. I eventually found the juvenile delinquents, and I forgave them for the situation they put me through while their parents were away.”
“She Told Me There Was A Surprise On The Floor”
“One time, I watched a friend’s kids who were completely rotten. Normally, I wouldn’t have watched them, but my friend was in a bind. Her daughter was four years old at the time, and she was potty trained. I figured it couldn’t be too bad babysitting the children.
When I was trying to get the youngest child to take a nap, I could hear the daughter hysterically laughing downstairs. When I went downstairs to check things out, I found the daughter went to the bathroom on the floor. It wasn’t an accident, either. She went to the bathroom on the carpet, on purpose.
The daughter looked at me and said, ‘Now you have to clean it up.’
I was livid. I cleaned up the mess and made the daughter take a bath. After I got her out, I figured I would help my friend with her laundry because she was so behind.
Four minutes into folding laundry, the daughter came into the kitchen and told me there was a surprise for me on the floor again.
I didn’t clean it up, and I left it for her mom. I never watched my friend’s children again.”
“It Was A Vision Of A Horror Movie”
“One night, I decided to babysit for a new family. It was fairly late at night, so I put the child to bed. I watched television in the living room while I waited for the parents to arrive back home.
As I was watching television, I heard something behind me. It sounded like footsteps as if someone was slowly approaching me.
I turned around, and I was shocked to find the child approaching me with a hammer raised above his head. He was planning to hit me with it!
For a second, I had visions of horror movies with creepy children.
I gently took the hammer away from the child and put him back to bed. I hid the hammer and made sure I searched his room for any other potential weapons before I left.
I spent the remainder of the evening making sure I didn’t have my back turned to the child’s bedroom. I never babysat for the family again.”
