ADVENTURE'S IN BABYSITTING...

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-08-2004
ADVENTURE'S IN BABYSITTING...
2
Wed, 07-14-2004 - 2:44pm

...remember that movie! lol


That was one of my favorites as a teen.


Where you a babysitter growing up? Do you have any strange tales, or funny stories about baby sitting? Do you think babysitting/not babysitting had any affect on you becoming a mom...and how so?



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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-08-2004
Wed, 07-14-2004 - 2:56pm

Where you a babysitter growing up?> Yes, people actually started hiring me when I was 11! I would not have hired me at 11..lol.


Do you have any strange tales, or funny stories about babysitting?> I had a couple who would hire me to babysit when I was 16. They beleived that it was wrong to have sex in their house while the kids were there. So every thursday they would hire me from 5 to 9. I always wondered if they were just really loud or freaky...LOL!


Do you think babysitting/not babysitting had any affect on you becoming a mom...and how so?> I think babysitting had a huge effect on my life! Even though my homelife was not ideal, It gave me a chance to see how "normal" families ran things. One parent was kind enough to give me a basic parenting book, as a requirement for watching her kids. I really learned a lot from it. I was always baby crazy and loved taking care of other people's kids. A big thing that left an impression was that being patient and kind to children almost always brought out a good result!

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2003
Thu, 07-15-2004 - 11:17am
Ok, this is embarassing... I was about 15, and babysitting a neighbors baby. The little boy was about 2 months old, and it was a beautful mild summer afternoon, so I went out in the back yard with him to sit under a tree in the shade on a blanket and read a book and give the baby his bottle (mom and dad were only going to be gone a few hours for a funeral...). Two houses down, a friend of mine from the neighborhood was watching her new nephew, also coincidentally about 2 months old, so after a while she came up with him in his stroller to sit with me on the blanket. Well, we put them both on the blanket, and had them all comfy with a couple pillows, and being that is was summer, had them both in white onesies and a diaper, no other clothes. The boys were very very similar in size, both had blue eyes and blonde fuzz. Beginning to see the problem?? After about an hour, my friend gets ready to head home with her nephew, only to realize that we've been passing the babies back and forth, back and forth (and had also changed her nephew's diaper using one from my bag so now even their diapers matched)...and now we don't really totally 100% know which is which. She had only watched her nephew once before for a few hours, and it was my first time with the neighbor's little one, so we weren't too sure on identifying marks, etc. We start to panic, and then decide that what we'll do is just wait--the neighbors would be home any minute, and we'd just lay them both on the blanket, all neat and clean, and play it like we were just hanging out in the back yard not mixing up poor innocent babies--mom would walk over, pick up hers, and that would be that. Funny thing is, dad is the first one over when they pulled in the driveway, and we could tell in that 30 seconds before mommy arrived at the blanket, he was in the same boat we were... LOL! When my twins were born, the first time we left them with a friend of mine, we came back to find Wes had a shirt on that said Wade, and Wade had Wes' on...she had NO clue they were mixed up :)

I think it's good training for a girl to babysit. The times that it goes badly are probably a better learning experience in some ways than the times it goes smoothly--you get a heads up that everyone goes into the "baby business" with NO clue, and you have to just learn as you go...

Angela

mommy to Wil, Wes & Wade