Um, SCARY! What’s even sadder and scarier is that the Redditor says that policy was in place at her work because her boss had seen it all before from parents or caregivers.
“To clarify,” she says, “the policy was put in place because my boss knew abusers have been known to do this. They’d break the kid’s arm, dose them, dump them with the sitter who lets the baby asleep all morning then because the kid was with the sitter all day, it’s easy to blame them for the baby’s injury. Or worse, the baby died and they do this to blame the sitter.”
From then on, she decided that even when she was babysitting privately for a family, she’d never accept sleeping babies or children from a parent, for everyone’s safety.
“To this day if I’m babysitting, I don’t accept sleeping children. I flat out refuse to watch kids at their home while they’re sleeping for the same reason,” she said. “I’ve pretty much stopped doing any child care because as much as I love kids, watching parents make bad decisions on purpose, when they know better, was killing my soul.”
Well. If that’s not depressing, I don’t know what is. But of course we know that in our society, it’s a reality that parents sometimes hurt their own children. I have to say that when my kids start babysitting, I’ll definitely caution them about accepting sleeping babies (especially because it’s not safe to let them sleep in a car seat anyway!) to protect themselves as well as the sweet ones they are caring for.
What do you think of this policy? I think it’s super sad and inconvenient to have to put it into place, but from a liability standpoint, it makes all kinds of sense.
