Dear Queenie,
Last week my sister offered to take care of our 6-year-old son overnight so my husband and I could go out to dinner and a show and have a nice romantic night together without interruptions or distractions.
It was our son’s first “sleepover” and we weren’t sure how he would take it, so after dinner we stopped by her house to see how he was doing.
My sister wasn’t home! She had gone out and left our son with a baby sitter, an elderly neighbour of hers. He was watching TV, adult programs we don’t let him watch and long past his bedtime, and she was sound asleep on the sofa!
We had to shake the babysitter to wake her up to find out why she was there and where my sister was. The house could have caught fire or our son could have gone outside to play in the street and she would never have known what was happening!
We packed up our son and took him home. We had a nice dinner, but we missed our show and the romantic night was completely spoiled.
The next day my sister called and wanted to know what was the matter. I told her we had trusted her to take care of our son, not some stranger who couldn’t even stay awake to supervise him, but she had shown she couldn’t be trusted. She said I was being silly, because nothing bad had happened.
Queenie, who is right?—Angry mother
Dear Angry mother,
You are. Your sister was not only untrustworthy, but dishonest and unfair.
There is nothing wrong with leaving a child with a responsible sitter, but when someone says they will take care of a child, they have a responsibility to do so personally. If, for some reason, they can’t or don’t want to, they have an obligation to tell the parents in advance who will actually be taking care of the child and to let them decide whether they are satisfied with that person’s capabilities.
Your sister had no right to leave your son with someone you don’t know without your knowledge or consent, however capable that person might have been, which this old lady clearly wasn’t.
