Mom Installs Camera To Discover Why Babysitters Keep Quitting, Breaks Down When She Sees The Footage
Bridget Elks was a mother simply trying to juggle her career with the demands of parenting. It was never easy, but she had to make it work to make ends meet. Her marriage had ended unexpectedly, and she had to secure a full-time job just to stay afloat. Her three children were all that mattered to her, but she desperately needed help.
After a long interview process, one woman seemed perfect for the job. She would babysit one-year-old Kirk and six-year-old Marie. Once Lisa was hired, Bridget could finally put her mind at ease, but things wouldn’t go according to plan. Bridget counted her blessings, feeling as though she had found someone reliable. After only a few weeks, Lisa almost felt like part of the family. Bridget finally felt she could focus on her work during the day, no longer having to juggle dropping her kids off at preschool and other activities.
But then, something unexpected happened. After only three weeks, Lisa left a message for Bridget that left her speechless.
“I am resigning,” Lisa informed her, asking to have her last paycheck ready when Bridget got home.
Lisa left without so much as a goodbye. What had changed? She had been so happy to be the nanny up until now. Only after a bit of convincing did Lisa explain the situation.
“Your daughter, Marie, is the reason that I have quit,” she told her.
Bridget couldn’t believe it. She felt the need to defend her child.
“You are being unprofessional,” she told Lisa, frustrated.
She had to start the hiring process from scratch. But after six months, she found herself on the verge of tears. Six nannies had all abruptly quit. Bridget couldn’t understand what was going on. She knew kids could be a handful sometimes, but surely that was what they signed up for? Surely her children weren’t any worse than anyone else’s? Why did every nanny come to the same conclusion?
Meg was the seventh nanny, and Bridget knew this time would be different. This time, nanny cams would show Bridget exactly why they always left. Every previous nanny had claimed that Marie was the issue at hand, so after setting up cameras everywhere, she wanted to see if her darling could really be capable of such behavior.
The new nanny seemed to be enjoying the job just fine, but just like every nanny before her, two weeks into the job, she resigned. At least now, Bridget could check the footage and see exactly why Meg had resigned, just like all the others. But what she found terrified her.
Bridget’s eyes grew wider the more she watched. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Marie never acted this way around her, so she had no reason to believe all the babysitters’ vague allegations. In the first week, Marie had been a little angel, but toward the end, Bridget didn’t even recognize her own daughter.
Bridget watched the footage. Meg politely asked Marie to hand her the baby’s diaper bag because her hands were full.
“You can’t tell me what to do!” the little girl screeched. “I’m the boss of you!”
Every time Meg asked Marie to do something, like wash her hands before lunch or get ready for school, Marie would refuse. Bridget was furious. The last straw for Meg had been the day she resigned. She had asked Marie, who was running around and making noise, to please quiet down because her baby brother had just fallen asleep.
“I’m the boss of you. I’ll get you fired!” Marie screamed in the babysitter’s face.
Bridget watched as Meg tried to de-escalate the situation, and then she reached for her phone. Bridget sat Marie down and explained that she had to respect her babysitter. She showed her the evidence that she had been acting out and tried to talk to her calmly. She asked the six-year-old if she thought her behavior was acceptable, but Marie’s response left her absolutely floored.
“We pay her. I’m her boss,” Marie snapped back.
Where was this behavior coming from? While Bridget scrambled to try and find a replacement nanny, there was no one to take Marie to her swimming lessons. When the little girl complained, Bridget pointed out that she was to blame.
“She is the reason that her sitter quit, and until I can find someone new, she won’t get to do the fun activities that her sitter took her to,” Bridget decided.
The furious mom vented on a parenting group on Facebook, but was that punishment enough?
“I was furious with my daughter and let her have it. She had several things taken away from her, and she didn’t do anything remotely fun until recently,” Bridget continued. “I also stopped arranging playdates for her and the friend who treated her nanny terribly. They don’t go to the same school, so they don’t see each other at all anymore.”
But what did other parents think? Her actions impacted someone enough to make them quit a job they were being paid to do. She has soiled her reputation, as word spreads fast within the babysitter community.
“If a child treats their caregiver like that, I imagine this wasn’t three isolated events, but more like it was happening way more frequently,” one mom wrote on the original post. “But those three times were when the babysitter was at her last straw.”
Then other babysitters leveled their opinions on the whole situation.
“I babysit some kids in the rich part of town and they have friends like OP’s kids’ friends,” one user replied. “In the beginning, the kids tried to treat me like that. I had a chat with the parents and said they can deal with it on their end, but if they wanted me to keep watching the kids, I’d be dealing with it on my end too. I was lucky that the parents supported my punishments. It definitely helps when the problem is tackled on both sides as a united force. But kids will be kids and what works for one definitely doesn’t work for all.”
Then a professional chimed in.
“It sounds to me like she was unhappy with the situation. The fact she had a sitter in the first place,” said Vicki Broadbent, founder of the parents’ blog, Honest Mom. “Maybe she wasn’t feeling like her needs were being met, for example, she might have felt she wasn’t being listened to, had lost all autonomy over even the smallest of decisions, clashed with her personality-wise, or most likely, was feeling a little abandoned by her parents in this scenario.”
So, could Bridget have handled the whole situation differently? Vicki pointed out that while most single moms need help with childcare and are not abandoning their children when they get help, it may have been understandable for Marie to have felt let down by her mom. Vicki pointed out that Marie might have felt especially resentful about the whole situation when the reasons for needing a sitter were not explained to her properly by her mom.
Vicki said that it is so important for parents to always explain the “why” behind decisions and scenarios, and this is especially true when they might affect them emotionally. Instead of just expecting Marie to accept a babysitter, she needed to be told exactly why Bridget had to hire one. So, Bridget should have told Marie that she needed a babysitter because she had to work hard to be able to pay for Marie’s dolls, swimming lessons, food, etc.
And the reason behind this—reminding them how emotionally safe and loved they are—is key, too.
“I personally hated having a nanny and later babysitters as a young child,” Vicki explained. “I wanted to be with my parents at all times, which is completely normal and natural. And although it was explained to me that they needed to work, therefore I needed sitters, it didn’t make life that much easier for me.”
According to Vicki, Marie may have felt hurt or like her feelings weren’t being considered, which caused her to act out. Marie was trying to tell her mother that she didn’t want a sitter, and her acting out was a cry for help.
Does that mean Vicki thought Marie had behaved appropriately and that Bridget was in the wrong?
“Yes, teaching children that they can’t be rude is crucial, but so is listening,” Vicki said. “And I mean really listening to them, to the unspoken as well as the spoken cues, and empathizing with their behavior while explaining better ways to express themselves so as not to hurt others.”
But Vicki noticed something else about Marie’s behavior that indicated the scenario wasn’t quite as cut and dried as it seemed. Bridget was right to tell Marie that she had been hurtful, but she should have also tried to understand why Marie was acting out in the first place.
“If they can’t describe why, it’s hard even for adults to self-reflect and psychoanalyze themselves. Then it’s your job as a parent to put in the detective work and ensure they feel more supported,” Vicki said.
So who else was in the wrong here? Furthermore, in this scenario, an adult must have at some point told the girl that she was the boss of her sitter, either in jest or in all seriousness, as age six is quite young to understand the complexities of money and the power that might give someone.
Vicki concluded that children learn the difference between right and wrong before two, and experts believe teaching your children how to have a high emotional IQ can start early on as well. But it is important to remember that children learn, as adults do, from making mistakes. So listening, empathizing, and also modeling behavior is the key in educating your child.
