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30 People Share Their Nanny Cam Stories And It Shows What Others Can Become When No One’s Around
There’s one unique body part found only in newborn parents, and both moms and dads know that's "mom's gut." If "mom’s gut" is telling you there’s something not quite right with your precious baby after a day spent with the nanny, it ain't lying. And you'd better have that baby cam up and working in no time.
When one Reddit user asked parents with nanny cams what they have caught their babysitters doing, the thread started flooding with teeth-clenching stories. 41K upvotes later, it became obvious that there’s never too much you can do to make sure your baby is in the right hands.
We invite all the Pandas to share their own nanny cam discoveries, whatever they may be, in our comments! Plus, read Bored Panda's interview with Carly Glendinning, the editor of Absolutely Mama magazine for modern moms, about the role baby monitors play in parenting.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
My grandpa was staying with my parents but they figured it best to hire the regular sitter to watch my younger siblings overnight since they didn’t think my grandpa was up to the task and they were attending a wedding a couple hours away and made plans to spend the night in a hotel nearby. They had set up a nanny cam in a couple room, my siblings bedroom, the master bedroom, living room and kitchen. All motion activated. They normally wouldn’t bother looking through the footage if everything seemed fine upon returning home and their master bedroom cam had never been triggered before. When they returned they noticed that the cam in the master bedroom had been triggered so they decide to take a look, cut to footage of my grandpa and the sitter both naked aggressively making out from the entrance of the room staggering while intertwined towards the bed and then about 20 minutes of banging on my parents bed. The sitter was about 20 years old and my grandpa was around 70 at the time. My dad called me immediately after he saw the footage laughing his ass off, and I could hear my mom crying in the background completely mortified from what she had just witnessed and shouting at my dad to throw out the sheets and kick out grandpa. My mom called the sitter to confront her and she just apologized and said there was “connection” or some sh*t to that matter, when she ask my grandpa what he was thinking he just said “At my age you must seize every opportunity.” I wish there was audio for the build up, I lay awake at night sometimes just wondering what kind of game my grandpa was talking to get in that sitters pants.
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#2
A little late to the party but here goes.... My mom suspected our maid of stealing the silverware. And she's just f**king nosy. Anyway, the maid was indeed stealing the silverware. I think that ended up being overshadowed by my dad f**king her, though.
#3
I bought one to keep an eye on the cats when we drove to see the eclipse and visit my fam a couple years ago. My one cat figured it out and would sit there having random conversations with me, rubbing his face on it.
It really entertained my family. Got a ping during the eclipse, seems he was seriously concerned about the planet. I could see my ancient cat running laps in the background while Smart Cat was giving me a rundown. The third cat was mysteriously absent.
Bored Panda talked to Carly, the editor of Absolutely Mama magazine, about the importance of baby monitors. According to her, it’s really up to the individual parent to decide whether their family needs a baby cam. However, she noted that “we’re seeing a trend for the next generation of baby monitors.” Carly explained that these new-generation monitors “don’t just enable you to see and hear your baby, but also allow you to record sleep data, monitor heart rate and breathing, and even enable you to speak to your baby to let them know you are coming.”
#4
Friend caught hers rummaging through her closet and stealing a blouse. She confronted her about it when she returned home, and the woman played innocent.
She was wearing the f**king blouse.
Lisa loves cats 4 years ago
My old babysitter stole my game boy and gave it to her kids... never got it back...
#5
This isn´t something that I caught a babysitter doing but I remember that I once saw on TV the case of some parents that went with her baby to the doctor because she cried a lot for apparently no reason. The doctor told them that she looked really stressed and asked them if they were doing something that could make her act like that. They didn´t. Then the doctor and the parents noticed some really tiny dots in the girl´s belly and they had no idea where they came from. The babysitter told them that she had no idea but they didn´t believe her and secretly put cameras to spy what she was doing.
Turns out that she was crazy. She was stabbing the baby with a needle from time to time and doing things like shaking her cradle incredibly hard to torment her. Of course, they called the police, confronted her and she got arrested
#6
Wish I had a nanny cam! My step sister was watching my brother with disabilities for me. She would dump out the contents of his capsules meds and use them later.
Didn't find out about it till he stared having seizures constantly and ended up in the hospital for the second time.
Most parents install a baby monitor once their baby is sleeping on their own, but Carly believes it’s never too late to do so. “There really isn’t a right or wrong time to do this, though. If you didn’t install one to begin with, but later on feel that it will give you peace of mind, then it’s not too late to get one.”
However, spying on a babysitter with the hidden camera is not a clever solution. “If you feel the need to ‘spy’ on your babysitter, then you probably need to rethink who you’re leaving your child with.” However, some new parents don’t have trusted friends or family close by to rely on. The Absolutely Mama editor assures readers that there’s always a way to go about it. “There are apps such as Bubble, where you can find a sitter who has been background checked and is recommended by other parents.”
#7
I pay my neighbor to feed the stray cats in my garden when I'm away for days at a time, and the camera caught my neighbor trying to come in by pole (bamboo) vaulting one time. He nailed it, amazingly.
#8
I was the babysitter who was caught. It actually wasn't a nanny cam but a security cam pointed to their back door. They caught me walking outside to smoke a bowl of their weed while the baby was down for a nap. Not my proudest moment but we're friends and they didn't give a damn about the weed. They just thought it was hilarious when I started talking to the dog about how great the weather was.
#9
Well a case which happened near where I live, woman used to work, husband out of country. Had a 2 year old kid. They hired a nanny to look after him during daytime. Day by day kid started looking malnourished. So she set up a spy cam.
Apparently the lady used to bring her kid and feed him all the food left for the kid she was supposed to babysit. Then she would feed the kid cheap biscuits. She was promptly handed over to police.
If you notice at any point that your nanny is behaving questionably, “it’s always best to talk through any worries with your nanny and explain why you might be uncomfortable with certain behavior.” In order to build a trusted relationship with your babysitter, “set out some ground rules and guidelines from the outset.”
In the end, you should trust the person who takes care of your baby, and a nanny cam might not be an excellent tool to make sure of it.
#10
Dancing the Macarena to entertain my niece and nephew
#11
We have a nest in our kids room and living/dining. You can see partially into the kitchen from the living room cam but not much. About the second week into using a new sitter we catch her talking tons of sh*t about my wife and how she coddles our 18 mo old son. Bragged about how she was going to quit at the end of the day because she hates working for us and doesn’t like our son. While she’s in the kitchen she puts him in his high chair and turns on an iPad for him to watch Elmo(no screen time allowed). He asks to get down and go play after a few minutes and she says no, he starts to cry and she basically yells at him “OMG are you serious right now?! Your so damn needy.” So he cry’s harder, about 10 minutes later she takes him back to his room where he calms down. I get home a few minutes later and send her on the way. Sitter: “Ohhh your home early, we had a rough morning but we are feeling better now” Me: “Yeah, hey you know that camera in the living room is on all the time and I can hear everything you say and do in the kitchen right?” She kinda stuttered and I told her to gtfo. Then me and my kid hung out all day and had a blast. The thing that got me was being mean to my son, like he’s not even 2 yet.
#12
Not a Nanny Cam because this happened in the 90s and I don’t think we had them in Scotland then but my mum came home early one day because she had become suspicious of our nanny as my sister and I never slept after a day with her. She found both my sister and I in bed in the middle of the day. Turned out my nanny had been dozing us up with child medicine to make us sleep all day so she could sit and do nothing.
#13
i’ve been a pretty regular weekend nanny for an amazing family for four years now. they’ve cycled through a couple different weekday nannies since i’ve been with them. there is only one monitor and it’s in the little dude’s room. once the mom showed me on the camera why they let one go. little dude said “mommy said i don’t have to do that.” and the nanny snapped back “well it doesn’t matter, mommy is a b*tch.” and then dragged the kid out of the room by his shirt. super fired.
#14
Not me but my aunts friend set up a nanny cam because she noticed that every time she changed her child’s diaper the child would start crying a lot more than usual. Turns out when they watched the nanny change her diaper, she would use Clorox wipes if they were nearby instead of grabbing the baby wipes.
#15
This was my (equivalent of) pre-k. All the kids were regressing in their movement ability and getting really fat so they set up spy equipment. Turns out one carer was doubling every baby’s food portions and forcefully overfeeding them.
#16
Chasing my cats around with a broom, hitting them. (She’s since been fired.)
#17
Not a parent.
Caught my little sister's babysitter catching a good hour long nap at 2 PM while my 1 year old sister was up having the time of her life destroying my playstation.
#18
Used knife to cut apples, licked knife clean, put back in drawer without washing. Yup. Wtf
#19
My aunt has a nanny cam and found my older cousin's babysitter playing blackjack with him......she lost $50 lol
#20
The family I nanny for told me that their previous nanny got caught doing LOADS of awful things. The couple that outraged me most were 1) leaving their 3 year old daughter in the tub with water up to her chest for TWO HOURS everyday while she sat in another room unable to see said child. And 2) once she went to run an errand with the same kid, and their doorbell camera caught her putting kid in car seat, not buckling her, and peeling off. The mom said you could see toddler trying to buckled herself in before they took off >:(
#21
I'm not a parent rather the child and I had this nanny, or yaya as we would call it. It became useless because she soon found out and kept unplugging the camera. It turns out she was slowly stealing money from my family.
We fired her.
#22
A friend caught his nanny hitting their kid for interrupting that days binge of the TV show Friends.
#23
We didn't have a nanny cam, but my mom set up the camcorder when she suspected our babysitter was stealing... And then caught the babysitter stealing... She returned most of the stuff when my mom threatened to report her to the police.. I think she should still have reported her anyway. Now she probably just went on stealing at other people's places.
#24
We once caught the nanny putting charcoal to feed them as a “snack”. This woman claimed that she thought it was a snack. It was in a charcoal box. My brothers were 4...
#25
There are cameras around my grandmother's house. She has dementia and is taken care of by nurses. One beat her up for a whole minute. Nurse knew there were cameras and didn't care. Obviously got fired. (We live in a sh*tty country with sh*tty laws, we weren't allowed to press charges or any of the sort).
#26
Obligatory not a parent, but part of my course training to be a childcare practitioner means we have to learn signs of abuse. We had to watch footage from nanny cams where the "carers" involved hit the children with large soft books (so it wouldn't bruise), swung an infant by the ankles for crying (which is why we now check ankles for bruises) and one awful woman shook a baby who wouldn't go to sleep. The child suffered severe brain damage and is now permanently mentally disabled. It made me sick to watch it.
#27
Not me, and not a babysitter, but my mum's friend was getting her house decorated by this painter. Since her and her husband would be at work all day they put all the valuables in their bedroom and set up nanny cams around the room.
Anyway, one day the husband gets this notification of movement from the cameras, he pulls up the footage and this painter is in their bedroom. The painter proceeds to get fully undressed and lie in the middle of their bed and masturbate. Needless to say the husband went straight home and fired him (I'm guessing he finished).
About five minutes later the decorator texts him "can I just ask why you've fired me" and the husband obviously replies "because you've just had a wank in my bed!". To which the painter replies "ok, no worries, I won't charge you for today's work"
#28
Not a nanny cam, but a vid. My SIL sat the camera down thinking she turned it off. I have over an hour of her teasing my toddler (in a mean way) with candy and popsicles. She started telling him that he would get some, then held it just out of reach. She then ate it in front of him making Mmmm Mmmm sounds. She was also calling him mean and weird names like “turd muncher, and Ricky Retardo”. The camera got all the audio, but only some video. At the end of the video is when we got home. When I confronted her with the video, she started claiming I “doctored it”. I was a liar, an “asshat”, and hated her because she was prettier than my wife (she is not). That was the last time she was allowed around either of our kids unsupervised. She was the SIL for 10ish years, and is now the Crazy Karen Ex SIL. I can’t have a presence on social media because she attacks me all the time, says lies etc... I am also estranged from my Brother because of her. 10 years of her warped his perception of our family. He still thinks some of the whacked out things she accused our Dad, sister, other brother, and various other family members of. No reasoning has convinced him of the truth, not even the thought that if video evidence refutes some of the claims, then all can be considered suspect. I may get comments and advice of what I could do, but in the end you can’t fight “crazy”, and sometimes life is just not fair. The only thing I have done to make things better is ignore her. She eventually just starts attacking someone else (like an annoying yipping dog, that just needs to annoy). As for my brother, I hope time will help to fix things. I also think that he might just be more like her than I think (birds of a feather fly together).
#29
Not a parent but my friend used to have a baby sitter
His parents caught his babysitter eating Viagra Pills.
His babysitter was a girl.
Toujin C'Thlu 4 years ago
My mind boggles at this, they wouldn't have done anything for her...
#30
When I was around 12yrs old, my parents caught my babysitter on camera stealing my NES games and shoving them into her pants and shirt. They confronted her about it and she kept denying it until Ninja Gaiden fell out of her pant leg. My mom took her into a room and made take out all the games she stole. She literally had games shoved under the strap of her bra on her back so that she could sneak them out of the house, and others were put inside the waist band of her underwear. She must've really thought about this for awhile. Anyway, we got the games back and she was sent home without pay.
What do you think ?
Melissa Hudson 4 years ago
Please know that all nannies are not like this! Some of us really love the families that employ us and wouldn't dream of hurting the children. These were hard to read. 😞
Kiss Army 4 years ago
Some of you probably need nanny cams to save you from the children! It would have busted my brothers for the years of torture they gave to babysitters!! Once my parents came home and found the babysitter crying on the front steps where my brothers had locked her out an hour or so before!
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What does a Foxxy say? 4 years ago
I sure hope that many of these people were reported to the police so they had it on their police record so no one else would hire them to care for children.
Jane Alexander 4 years ago
We need a register for them, rather like the sex offenders register. 'known to be cruel to children register', 'known thief register' etc.
Load More Replies...
LittleMissLotus 4 years ago
As a baby sitter, I'm horrified at how unprofessional and abusive these people are. I can promise that not all of us are like this
deanna woods 4 years ago
My aunt went blind and needed a home health aide. I eventually became her aide, but the lady before me would bring her kids into my aunt's apartment, she stole valuables from her, and even took out credit cards in her name. This is the reason my aunt wanted me to work for her. She knew she could trust me. This lady's family also tried to get me fired once I did start the job. Before this happened, one of my great grandmother's( who had Alzheimers) neighbor stole possessions out of her apartment and when my family confronted her about it, her husband pulled a gun on my father. Thankfully, he saw the guy and was able to get away.
Carrot dude 4 years ago
The ones about the babies make me want to cry. My little brother is so sweet and precious and I can't imagine anything like this happening to him.
Cori 4 years ago
This is why my mom is the ONLY person who watches my kids. Just reading all those stories about crying and abused toddlers made my anxiety spike. I can barely stand to leave my babies with my ex husband. There is no way I could leave them with a stranger. To a stranger, my kids are just kids. But to me, my kids are my entire universe.
Luisa Vasconcelos 4 years ago
What kind of nanny cam are those, that went unnoticed ? Asking for myself and my 2 and 4 years old kids.
Barbara Baldwin 4 years ago
When I babysat kids or grannies I always pretended there were cams everywhere. Sometimes I pretended jesus was right behind me, ready to tsk tsk me if I goofed.
Living_Shadow 4 years ago
All of these make me want to never hire someone into my home unless I'm around, ugh
Hans 4 years ago
While these stories are outraging, am I the only one to be disturbed by cameras being set up without notice? Over here this would be illegal (even in your own home, if you film people you employ), and punishable harsher than many of the actions described here. Whowever now exlcaims "trust is good, control is better" might consider that this quote is from Lenin...
Melissa Hudson 4 years ago
Please know that all nannies are not like this! Some of us really love the families that employ us and wouldn't dream of hurting the children. These were hard to read. 😞
Kiss Army 4 years ago
Some of you probably need nanny cams to save you from the children! It would have busted my brothers for the years of torture they gave to babysitters!! Once my parents came home and found the babysitter crying on the front steps where my brothers had locked her out an hour or so before!
Load More Replies... What does a Foxxy say? 4 years ago
I sure hope that many of these people were reported to the police so they had it on their police record so no one else would hire them to care for children.
Jane Alexander 4 years ago
We need a register for them, rather like the sex offenders register. 'known to be cruel to children register', 'known thief register' etc.
Load More Replies... LittleMissLotus 4 years ago
As a baby sitter, I'm horrified at how unprofessional and abusive these people are. I can promise that not all of us are like this
deanna woods 4 years ago
My aunt went blind and needed a home health aide. I eventually became her aide, but the lady before me would bring her kids into my aunt's apartment, she stole valuables from her, and even took out credit cards in her name. This is the reason my aunt wanted me to work for her. She knew she could trust me. This lady's family also tried to get me fired once I did start the job. Before this happened, one of my great grandmother's( who had Alzheimers) neighbor stole possessions out of her apartment and when my family confronted her about it, her husband pulled a gun on my father. Thankfully, he saw the guy and was able to get away.
Carrot dude 4 years ago
The ones about the babies make me want to cry. My little brother is so sweet and precious and I can't imagine anything like this happening to him.
Cori 4 years ago
This is why my mom is the ONLY person who watches my kids. Just reading all those stories about crying and abused toddlers made my anxiety spike. I can barely stand to leave my babies with my ex husband. There is no way I could leave them with a stranger. To a stranger, my kids are just kids. But to me, my kids are my entire universe.
Luisa Vasconcelos 4 years ago
What kind of nanny cam are those, that went unnoticed ? Asking for myself and my 2 and 4 years old kids.
Barbara Baldwin 4 years ago
When I babysat kids or grannies I always pretended there were cams everywhere. Sometimes I pretended jesus was right behind me, ready to tsk tsk me if I goofed.
Living_Shadow 4 years ago
All of these make me want to never hire someone into my home unless I'm around, ugh
Hans 4 years ago
While these stories are outraging, am I the only one to be disturbed by cameras being set up without notice? Over here this would be illegal (even in your own home, if you film people you employ), and punishable harsher than many of the actions described here. Whowever now exlcaims "trust is good, control is better" might consider that this quote is from Lenin...
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