Babysitting comes with a host of its own unique challenges. Sometimes, taking care of the little munchkins isn’t even the hardest thing! Sometimes… it’s the parents giving you headaches and seriously making you reevaluate choosing to help this particular family out. That’s the kind of situation that redditor Electronic_Professor was in.

The redditor shared a dramatic story about a babysitting client for whom punctuality and proper communication simply didn’t exist—a mom who would be constantly late coming back home without giving even so much as a heads-up.

Eventually, the babysitter grew more and more frustrated. The last straw was when the mom was soooo late coming back home, she completely ruined Electronic_Professor’s plans for the evening. That’s when the redditor felt like she needed to call the police about what was going on. She then asked the AITA community for a verdict about who was wrong in this case.

You can read the full story about what happened in Electronic_Professor’s own words below, dear Pandas. When you’re done, be sure to let everyone know your thoughts about the entire bizarre situation. What would you have done if you were in the babysitter’s shoes? Who do you think was in the wrong in this particular case?

A frustrated babysitter shared her story on the AITA subreddit about how she ended up calling the police on one of her clients

Image credits: cottonbro (not the actual photo)

Here’s how everything went down, in the babysitter’s own words

Image credits: Electronic_Professor

Personally, I believe that Electronic_Professor showed a lot of patience and restraint dealing with that particular family. As she said in her post on the AITA subreddit, she liked taking care of the kids. And the extra money never hurt, either.

However, the main problem was that the mom kept returning home late hours and hours later than she was supposed to. This meant that the babysitter’s weekends were effectively ruined because she couldn’t make any personal plans or would have to cancel them.

Here’s the thing, though. It would be perfectly acceptable to babysit the kids the entire day if the parent would explain in advance exactly when they’d be coming back. However, lying about the time and being unable to pick up the phone and give a simple heads-up if they’re running (a bit) late? That’s unacceptable. Even worse, it shows the mom’s attitude towards babysitters in general, as though they might be unworthy of basic communication.

One evening, the mom was supposed to be back by 9 pm. Surprise surprise, 9 pm rolls around and she’s nowhere to be seen. The babysitter kept calling and texting her without any success. Eventually, her plans for the night were ruined, feeling completely ignored by her client, she decided to go with an ultimatum: either the mom comes back by 1 am or the redditor considers the kids abandoned and calls the police.

Electronic_Professor followed through on her threat and the police came along to pick up the kids and take them to the station. Naturally, the babysitter provided all of the evidence of having tried to contact the mom throughout the evening.

The redditor didn’t get a chance to sleep easy, though. She was woken up in the middle of the night by the mom who “cursed her out.” Meanwhile, in the morning, the mom sent her a long message blaming her for everything. The reason why the babysitter asked the AITA community for a verdict was that she spoke to a friend with kids who said she might have been acting petty calling the police.

The babysitter’s post got 27.7k upvotes in a single day and she started a real discussion on the subreddit, getting over 3.4k comments. A lot of people supported what the redditor did, speculating about the potential reasons why the mom was constantly late. Unfortunately, it seems like the babysitter didn’t even get paid in the aftermath of the drama. What’s more, it’s still not clear as to why the mom was so late.

The author of the story had some additional information she wanted to share with those interested in what happened

Earlier, Bored Panda spoke to a professional babysitter, redditor Nannyponyo, about some of the challenges the job presents and the unreasonable demands some parents have for the people they hire.

“I think the most unreasonable demands are absurd restrictions for no reason. I have worked with several special needs kids or kids with special circumstances (severe allergies, anxiety, etc.), and some truly need healthy restrictions, but I’ve met with many families who expect a 45+ hour work week and the caregiver is not allowed to leave the home with the child,” they said.

According to the babysitter, some parents do a lot of harm to their kids by being overprotective, for example, by not letting them leave the house and play. “They’re destroying any chance for their child to grow and develop socially and often motor skills are delayed because they’re afraid to let their child out of the house to run and climb and play the way they should,” she said.

“I think they believe that it’s their child that they are raising the way they want to (which I do agree with, to an extent) and all rules should be blindly followed. But some nannies (like myself) have been in the field for many years and can offer valuable insight and advice, which they are rarely willing to take because parenting is so personal.”

They continued: “That’s the same reason I believe they often don’t want to offer adequate compensation: it’s personal. They’re (most likely, in my experience) paying you under the table, they’re trying to get a good deal, and they love their child. They don’t think that looking after their ‘precious angel’ is a job; it’s a treat. They would love to be home with their child all day, so I think they feel like it’s not a real job. It’s something you get to do, and they’re mad they have to pay someone to do it.”

Meanwhile, some parents believe that looking after their kids is a privilege, so they’re blind to how difficult the job may be for a stranger. “There’s a connection there that someone else could never have, and they can’t imagine not having that connection, so they treat it like it’s not a job, it’s a privilege. The ‘you’re so lucky you get to stay home with my baby while I have to go to work’ mindset, when in reality we leave our families to take care of yours; we don’t want to leave our families in the morning for work any more than you do, but it’s our job.”

Most redditors were very sympathetic to the babysitter. Here’s what they had to say about the dramatic situation

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