Babysitting is a hard gig. Whether it's getting the kiddos to get to bed on time or keeping them out of trouble long enough for their parents to come home, taking care of other people's kids can be difficult. That's not even including all the terrifying, dangerous things that could happen while the kids' parents are far from home. These poor babysitters had some horrible nights where they fought off intruders, caught falling babies, dealt with ex-husbands bent on revenge, and much, much more. Give these teens a raise! Content has been edited for clarity.
“I Need To Get This Off My Chest”
“I need to get this off my chest.
My mom worked at a headstone manufacturer when I was just out of high school. You’d go in or call and order a granite or other stone marker for graves. The owner was a young guy, nice, divorced with kids. His ex had a serious drinking problem, so he was raising his 2 kids sort of on his own. Cute little blonde girl and quiet boy no older than 4. I offered to babysit for him one night while visiting my mom at work so he could go on a date. I showed up at his apartment, made the kids dinner, let them watch a movie, and put them to bed. It got pretty late and I ended up falling asleep on the futon they had in the living room.
Some time in the middle of the night he came home, but instead of him crawling into his own bed or waking me to relieve me of my babysitting duty, he crawled onto the futon with me and passed out.
I woke up pretty early the next morning because he was snoring loudly and freaked out. I tried to call my mom to pick me up, but no answer. Apparently I made enough noise to wake him and he said he’d get up in an hour to take me home. It was the most awkward hour of my life.
To add insult to injury, I never got paid for that night – he gave my mom a dresser he built for me as payment.”
He’s Not Who He Says He Is
“When I was a preteen, I babysat a lot.
Once I was babysitting two sisters, one was about 6 and the other was an infant. The 6-year-old was down the street at a birthday party and the baby and I were just chilling and watching TV. The parents were off at a movie and about 30 minutes after they left, there was a knock at the door.
I got up and looked through the small window in the door to see this dude in a shirt with an Xcel Energy name-tag and a clipboard. He gives me this talk about checking a gas meter in the basement. I had this instinctual gut feeling that something was wrong and tell him, ‘I’m the babysitter, give me a minute and I’ll call the parents to see if they forgot to tell me about an appointment.’
So I head to the kitchen to get the phone and call up the mom (I also checked to make sure the backdoor was locked). She starts freaking out and assures me that they didn’t have an account with Xcel and tells me they’re leaving the theater immediately.
I go back to the door and explain that I won’t be letting him in. He starts getting pushy with me and telling me that its really important and is a safety issue, etc. I didn’t see any Xcel Energy van or car on the street out front and was beginning to get nervous.
Luckily, the parents called a neighbor who showed up and demanded the guy leave the property. The guy ran off and walked around the corner so we didn’t get a vehicle description but the police came and took my statement as soon as the parents got home. A few days later, the parents told me that a similar guy had gone to a neighbor’s and tried to intimidate his way into her house. The situation definitely has made me more aware of my surroundings!”
How Was She Going To Tell The Kids?
“I was babysitting my friend’s 3 and 7 year old. They had told me they’d be home around 10. So around 11:00, I texted my friend to ask if everything was okay and gave her an update on the kiddos. By midnight, I still hadn’t heard anything so I called my friend’s phone and it went straight to voicemail. So I called her husband’s phone and it too went straight to voicemail. I ended up nodding off on the couch for a few hours and woke up a little after 3 and heard on the TV that there had been a deadly, multiple car crash on the highway. My heart started racing. No names or anything were released but to my half-awake mind, of course my friends had been involved in the fatal car crash. I woke my husband up and we both tried calling my friend’s and her husband’s phone again. At 6:00 am, the kids started waking up and I had no idea what to tell them when they asked where their mommy and daddy were. I almost started crying thinking about having to tell them that their parents were dead. My husband and I got them up and made them breakfast and tried to pretend that everything was okay. About an hour later, I hear the garage door opening and run to the door and there is my friend and her husband pulling in, completely unscathed. They had both gotten wasted and had fallen asleep in the car. I was relieved but so livid!”
She Was Friendly To The Wrong Man
“I was 16 and my friend Amanda was 14. We were watching her cousins for the weekend (Paul was about 5, Stella was 10 or 11). So we watched them Friday and it went fine. Their mom dropped by Saturday, paid us 30 bucks and picked up some of her clothes and left, so we decided we’d walk to the convenience store to get some candy, junk food, soda and rent a few movies. The store was two blocks away, Amanda and Paul wanted to cut through yards to get home and Stella didn’t want to, so I told Amanda to take him home and me and Stella would just take the sidewalk. We could pretty much see their house from the store and it was around 7 pm in the summer, so it wasn’t too late, it was literally a 5 minute walk on the sidewalk.
Stella and I were almost at the corner to turn on to her street. The house right before the corner was a known dealer’s house. Out walks this guy and me being my friendly Canadian self, I say hi politely. The guy stops and says something along the lines of, ‘Wait, I know you, right?’ I told him I didn’t know him, he looks at Stella and says, ‘I know her, I’m friends with your dad.’ Her dad really was into that lifestyle pretty heavy. The guy starts asking why I have her with me. I tell him I’m babysitting with my friend, probably dumb of me. He starts getting closer, told me I was pretty and says, ‘Oh, are you going home? Why don’t I come, too? We can all hang out, you teen girls like to party right?’ The guy’s eyes were like pin drops, he was clearly high.
I grab Stella’s hand and kinda push her behind me while still holding her hand because I’m starting to get scared and want to keep her away. Right then, my friend comes outside and sees us and yells for us to hurry our tails up. I look at Stella and just say run.
We run, with me still holding her hand cause I don’t want her to fall behind, and the guy just stood there. Once we got into the house, we watched from the window until he left. I told Amanda what happened and we called the kids’ mom but she said it was fine and that stuff happens (we were in a poor part of town).
So I’m still weirded out and Stella is still a little scared, so we all decided to watch a movie in the living room, which is where the front door is. I grab a large knife from the kitchen and set it on the side table. We kinda forgot about the whole situation for a while while we watched the movie.
About half an hour later someone starts banging on the door and yelling to open up. Now, normal people would call the cops, but I’m half dumb and half ballsy, so I tell Amanda to take the kids in the kitchen and once they’re out of sight, I open the door a crack. It’s the weird guy. He was talking a lot, he said something about he knew where Stella’s mom lived so he knew where I’d be. I try telling him he has to leave but he just starts to get closer. I should have slammed the door, but I got scared and backed up. I grabbed the knife as I was backing up and held it behind my back.
By this time, he’s pushed the door open and is standing in the doorway. I kept telling him he needed to get out and he said something about me being there alone (since they were hiding, he thought it was me there alone now). Right then, Amanda comes out of the kitchen, the kids are half hiding behind her as much as two kids can hide behind a 80 pound, 5 foot nothing 14-year-old. Amanda is holding a huge butcher knife, the guy looks over and sees her. I step back, bring the knife I have out from behind my back, and hold it at my side. Amanda yells at him to get out, I tell him, ‘You need to get out before we stab you.’ Dude bolted so quick he didn’t even shut the door.
We called the kids’ mom and told her the dude showed up and pretty much forced his way in and even told her he didn’t leave until he knew we had knives. She just told us just to lock the door and we’d be fine. We called Amanda’s mom and told her, she picked us all up and we all slept in Amanda’s bed that night. Paul was asleep by midnight, but me, Amanda, and Stella didn’t fall asleep until well after 4 am. We watched the kids at her mom’s for two more days and luckily nothing bad happened
It’s been about 9 years, I talk to Stella from time to time, she’s told me before that she remembers that night and that she thought the guy was gonna kill us.
And all this because my Canadian self thinks it’s rude to walk by someone and not say hi.”
Sheer Dumb Luck
“I was about 14, we lived in military housing, and there was a new couple with two kids who were referred to me. The house was pretty empty- they had only been there a week or so. And the mom was showing me around with the 3 month old baby in her arms.
I was a little worried- 3 months old was the youngest baby I’d ever watched. And the mom thought similarly. They were only going to go to their welcoming event for a couple of hours, and it was right there on base, though, so not far. What could go wrong?
What went wrong was while we were at the top of the staircase, her 3 year old called to her from downstairs. I started to walk down the stairs and the mother was following me. A strap on her sandal broke and she suffered a catastrophic fall, taking me out as she toppled, dropping the baby in her arms.
Well, I’m not sure how it happened, as I’m not exactly famous amongst friends for my grace, but as I was being bulldozed over, I reached up and snatched the baby out of the air, and held her up high as we all fell.
I ended up with a black eye and some bruises where the mom essentially tackled me. The baby was completely unscathed. The mom ended up with an open fracture of one leg, right above her knee, and a decent concussion. She didn’t act as if anything hurt at all, though. She just kept on saying, ‘You saved my baby, you saved my baby,’ as the dad called the ambulance.
I think they paid me $200 for a four hour gig that night, which in 1987 wasn’t too shabby. But I don’t think my pulse slowed down for a week. I pretty much stopped babysitting shortly after that, because it freaked me out so much. Not just the event, but word getting around that I was like some superhero with cat-like reflexes, when I’m pretty sure if that happened again, I couldn’t grab that baby if I tried.”
“I Could See A Figure Standing Over The Crib”
“I babysit my cousin’s two kids pretty much every other Friday night so he and his wife can have some time alone and out of the house. Their kids are 2 and 6 months so they have video monitors in each of their rooms and I pretty much watch the monitors and read or watch tv. Roughly a month ago I heard talking coming out of one of the monitors. It was a man’s voice and he kept saying over and over again, ‘Its ok, go back to sleep, I’m here’ and I could see a figure standing over the crib in the 6 month old’s room. I freaked out thinking someone has broken it (they had a break in around Christmas time and the guy was never caught). I called the police and my cousin and crept upstairs with a knife to protect myself and the babies. No one was upstairs and both kids were sound asleep. Needless to say I was thoroughly freaked out until the police and my cousin came out. It didn’t help that they lived in an older home and everything creaked. Fast forward to last week the exact same thing happened to my cousin during the day while the kids were napping. But since it was day time the video monitor gave off a better picture of the room. Apparently the one monitor in the 6 month olds room switches over to the neighbors monitor every once in a while. The voice I heard was that of his next door neighbor soothing their crying baby who is around the same age.”
“I Start Making Them Mac And Cheese To Distract Them”
“I used to babysit my neighbors kids when I was 13. I didn’t know them very well, but the neighbor was a single mom and sometimes had me watch them for a couple hours to run errands. We lived in a really poor area and my mom was a single parent too, so I tried to help out how ever I could.
One night, we hear police sirens and see flashing lights next door. I come to see what’s going on, talk to one of the cops and find out the mom has overdosed; a friend came to visit and saw her on the floor through the window. He asks me to watch the kids (3 and 6) so they don’t have to see it. I take them next door and start making them macaroni and cheese to distract them, while being completely shell shocked over the situation (mind you, I was 13 and home alone).
‘When can we go home? I wanna see Mommy!’
‘Mommy is… Busy right now so you guys have to stay here. Your grandma is on the way to come get you. Can you eat your dinner for me?’
‘Mommy turned blue and fell over the shoes.’
‘… What??’
‘Yeah! She was turning blue in her face and fell on top of the shoes by the door. She keeps her medicine in a secret box under the bed, they should give her the medicine and she’ll feel better. I wanna see mommy. Can we go home?’
I stayed stone faced until their grandma showed up, then burst into tears. Mom didn’t make it, the kids live with grandma now. I hope they turned out ok.”
“I Bet My Mom Thought My Twin Was Dead”
“A family member babysat me and my twin when we were much younger. My parents told us the story when we grew up and it is one of the last things any babysitter would want to happen to them.
My parents were going on a date for their anniversary and had a family member (your average teenage girl) babysit us for the night. She adored babies and would always play with us when she would occasionally visit. My parents were in the living room getting ready to leave for the night and we were in our room playing with her. After a bit, she starts throwing me up and down in the air playfully. My dad took notice and wanted to tell her to be careful as the fan was on, but decided she was aware and headed back to the living room.
After a few more playful tosses in the air, she put me down and started to do the same thing to my twin. Except, he wasn’t as lucky. Maybe 30 seconds later, a scream followed by a loud gasp filled the house. My parents came rushing into the room and the sight was one my mom couldn’t forget. The babysitter just stood there in what I assume was shock. My twin was accidentally tossed into the fan while it was on and it wasn’t some lightweight cheap ceiling fan. It was one of those solidly built, aluminum bladed fans. The fan setting was thankfully not set to high, but medium.
With how she described it, I bet my mom thought my twin was dead for the initial few seconds of coming in the room. Blood was splattered throughout half the room, everywhere – as if someone was brutally beaten. My twin was on the bed laying in his own blood with a huge gash on his forehead and multiple on the top/around his head. You could only imagine what was going through the babysitter’s head from what just happened. An ambulance quickly came to get him cleaned up and he was given a lot of stitches on his forehead/head. My parents were more than relieved the blades didn’t strike an eye and that he made it out fine. The babysitter didn’t come around after that, even though everyone got over it pretty quickly since it was an accident.
He still has the scar on his forehead today! We would joke around about the scar and how it was actually my plan to take him out to be an only child, or how he got his scar wrong and it’s suppose to zigzag like Harry’s lightning bolt scar. I guess it’s an interesting story to tell if anyone asks him about the faint scar on his forehead.”
“Karen, You Dirty Hag!”
“I was eleven and babysitting for our neighbor who was going through a nasty divorce. She had two sons who were eight and one. She leaves on her date and says she’ll be back around midnight. She doesn’t tell me where she’s going and I have no way to contact her because it’s the ’80s and no one has cell phones.
I’m watching TV, the boys are asleep, everything’s fine. Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. Then banging and slurred cursing. ‘Karen, you dirty hag, I know you’re in there, open the effing door!’ I’m frozen looking at the door when the oldest boy comes flying down the stairs and runs to the door yelling, ‘Daddy’s home!’
I grab him and pull him away from the door. By this time, the ex-husband has gone to his truck to get his piece to teach that ‘hag’ a lesson. He’s banging on the door and threatening to start shooting through it if no one opens it.
I grab both kids and run out the back door and across the street to my house where my mom calls the police. When the police arrive a few minutes later, they find the ex-husband taking a massive dump on Karen’s porch. He gets arrested and I wait with the kids at my house for their mom to show up.
Karen shows up, is totally unfazed by the story and doesn’t even pay me because she ‘lost’ her wallet at the restaurant.”
An Open Window Led To A Nasty Surprise
“This happened like 20 years ago. I was in middle school, lived in an upper middle class neighborhood in a little New England town with virtually no crime. I had just started babysitting, had just taken a whole babysitting course at a local hospital, and after putting up some fliers, I got my first gig. It was at a house in my neighborhood (about a 5 minute walk from my house). They had an older girl (who was maybe 8 or 9) and a young toddler-ish age boy. Their mom was giving me the rundown of their routine and giving me a little tour of their house. We went into her son’s bedroom and she said something to the effect of, ‘Hmm, that’s odd. Why is his window open…?’ She quickly shut the window and seemed somewhat distracted from that point on. She hurried through the rest of the tour and then told me to go hang out with the kids while she finished getting ready.
About 2 minutes later, she hurries in, sort of hustles us out the door and outside. I’m pretty confused at this point, but being an awkwardly shy middle school-aged girl, I just go along with it. Once we get to the driveway, she pulls me aside and tells me that she went back to her bedroom after noticing the open window, and saw most of her jewelry was missing. Soon after telling me this, about 10 cop cars come flying in, cops run out with weapons drawn, the whole works. Cops tell me to leave, so I head home, pretty terrified. Turns out the burglar (who had broken in the night before) was still hiding in the son’s closet, right next to where we were standing when the mom realized the window was open and something was off. I don’t really like to imagine how that could have gone had she not noticed the open window and left me there for the night with her two kids. Needless to say, that was the beginning and end of my babysitting career.”
Every Babysitter’s Worst Fear
“I was playing hide-and-seek with the three kids I was babysitting (they were 3, 6, and 9) and I was seeking. Well, I found the oldest and the youngest but couldn’t find the middle child. After thirty minutes of searching (the house wasn’t that big), I just wanted to die. I couldn’t believe I actually lost a child; it was like a bad movie. So I called the parents, ready to have the worst from them on account of losing their child.
I told them what happened while I’m scared pantsless, and they laughed and said, ‘Did you specify the boundaries?’
The WHAT?!
Turns out the middle child hid in a bush in their neighbor’s front yard (a place that she had hidden in before, which is how the parents knew about it) because I didn’t SPECIFY the stupid BOUNDARIES of hide-and-seek.
Even though the parents weren’t mad, I still have nightmares about that.”
The Most Horrible Of Situations
“Finding out the 6 year old boy was being intimately abused by his 9 year old sister (and by a 10 year old boy from school that the sister would take him to).
Told the parents and those monsters got happy because they thought they were gonna be rich after suing the school (shockingly didn’t work out).
After that they just dropped it but the girl kept abusing the boy and I told him to go to his mom and tell her. He did so a few days later in front of us and the mom just slapped him and told him not to say those type of things.
At the time I lived in the house with them with my wife and we took care of the kids (we were young at the time). They kicked us out on Halloween (which we were already half way out so we happily packed and left). Before we finished leaving the dad called the cops on us and tried getting us arrested for being ungrateful (because we were leaving even though he told us to).
Both parents are horrible people. I feel so bad for that little boy and now that I’m older wish I would have done something more.”
Boys Will Be Boys?
“I babysat these two WILD terror boys that lived across the street when I was young, maybe 14. They were never disciplined and incredibly hyper and violent. The youngest one, maybe 4 at the time, swiped a pencil from a drawer and stabbed me in the forehead above my eye with it, HARD. The lead broke off under the skin and I couldn’t get it out. It ended up getting infected and becoming extremely painful. I ended up having to have surgery and still have a scar from it. The kids’ parents paid the medical bills but never apologized. The mom just basically said that boys will be boys. They were awful people.”
A Double Whammy
“I was watching a 2-month-old and a 6-year-old. Both, unfortunately, have Epilepsy. I can relate because I, too, have Epilepsy. I was feeding the baby when I hear a crash and look over to see the 6-year-old having a Grand Mal seizure in the living room. I quickly but carefully set the baby in his pack n play and ran over and put the 6-year-old on his side and let the seizure play out, there’s nothing you could do to stop them, you have to let it go. I was also on the phone with 911. Literally as soon as the ambulance got there, the 2-month-old started seizing as well. The paramedics were tending to the 6-year-old and I was tending to the 2-month-old, so everyone in the room was busy. A second ambulance was there in minutes to take the baby to the hospital. I was told to ride with the baby and meet with the parents at the hospital. It was insane. I think the loud noises and crying scared the baby because he was crying and probably very overwhelmed and scared, so that’s what may have caused his seizure. The parents felt really bad for me but honestly, I felt bad for the kids. Hopefully they’ll grow out of it while they’re still young.”
“I Practiced Swallowing My Pills!”
“I was babysitting my brother while my parents went to Miami to get my mom her passport. This was around the time my little brother got pills for ADD and he was having the worst time swallowing one pill by itself with water.
It was around 8 pm when my brother comes down and says, ‘I practiced swallowing my pills!’ He was super proud and I was terrified. I thought he swallowed the whole bottle or enough to overdose. I call my mom up and she’s like okay get him water and try to get him to throw it up.
He probably thought I was crazy for what I tried to get him to do. I learned later he was practicing with candy, specifically Skittles.
Just that gut wrenching moment was terrifying to me.”
Just Staring
“Babysitting for a family with one of my friends. We were watching 3 kids and having a dance party in the living room. There’s a huge window facing the backyard, with no curtains or blinds. Out of nowhere my friend freezes and says ok guys lets head to our bedrooms! She whispers to me ‘there’s a guy standing in the backyard staring in the window.’ I hid with the kids in the bedroom while she called her dad who lived a few streets over. The dad came to investigate but never found anyone. Still have no clue who it was or what he was doing in the backyard but it was a horrible experience.”
What Would A Teen Want With Kids That Young?
“I was 14, looking after a 10 and 7-year-old for an overnight stay at a house in the sketchier part of town. I lived in Winnipeg, so there was some gang activity in that area of town.
Everything started out normal, just hanging out watching TV until a kid knocked on the door. He looked to be about 16 years old and asked if the two kids could come and hang out. I said no because I had no idea if that was ok and told him sorry. This guy messaged the two kids I was looking after on their phone and they told me they wanted to go hang out with him, but I was still unsure about it. A bigger teenager wanting to hang out with the two young kids seemed weird even at 14, so I said no again.
The kids eventually just decided that they were going whether I said yes or not and left the house while I was in the bathroom.
I’m a 14-year-old scared silly of the neighborhood, so I never went very far from the house looking for them. I called the mom of the kids right away and she came back from her party very quickly, and found the kids in no time, dragged them back to the house and I witnessed the scolding of a lifetime. She apologized to me a ton, but I just felt bad about the whole thing.
Got paid a hundred bucks for it, though.”
The Voice In The Darkness
“I was in the living room, watching ‘Sister Sister,’ when all of a sudden I hear a man say, ‘Hello.’
I check the front door, look out the window at the driveway, parents aren’t home. Go upstairs and check the kids, they’re both still in bed (and not dead with a maniac wearing their skin as a disguise).
I go back downstairs, hear it again, from the darkened dining room. ‘Hello. I am Armando.’
They had a freaking parrot.”