When I say that not everyone likes babysitting, I know many will agree. Because its a work that requires an immense amount of patience and focus so that the baby stays safe as well as entertained. In short, babysitting isn’t easy, and if you don’t enjoy it, it’s even tougher.
And when it’s holiday time when you just want to relax, the last thing you would want to do is spend all your time and attention on a toddler. Now the thing is, if you have children of your own already, babysitting somebody else’s kids is probably pretty difficult too, considering you spend a lot of time babysitting already.
Well, this story is exactly the same. It’s about babysitting, but with a rather curious twist. The Reddit post from which this story originates quickly gathered 15.7k upvotes and prompted 1.9k comments. Scroll down to find out more and consider leaving a comment!
Taking care of a baby is hard work as it is, but if you have to do that on holiday, it can be even more frustrating
As the text above implies, this story is about babysitting, at least on the surface. Slight family drama and inconsiderateness of the person in question are there too. Also, if you ever thought of babysitting of your own free will, what follows might change your mind about that.
A woman and her fiance got invited to go on holiday by car, and it turned out they would have to endure a screaming baby and bad odors for the whole trip
The original poster on the Reddit subforum embarked on a road trip with her fiance’s family and it went quite poorly from the get-go. They were “trapped” in the car for the duration of the journey, having to listen to a baby that wouldn’t stop crying and endure the odor of dog poop. Such a journey would be a challenge to pretty much anyone, so it is no wonder why, for the rest of the story, the OP was rather on edge.
The next thing she knew, the woman was quickly turned into a babysitter for pretty much the entirety of the holiday
Once the actual holiday started, the Original Poster got suddenly turned into a babysitter. Although the necessity of the woman’s reaction you’ll see later on is questionable, most people in her situation would probably get quite frustrated. And that is completely understandable—you go through a living hell of a car ride, which wears you out, and then you are pretty much forced to take care of a baby that isn’t even your own. The woman who posted her story, as she mentioned earlier, actually has children herself so it is extra unfair to give her this responsibility when she should be resting.
At this point, the woman could not stand it anymore, but instead of refusing, she decided to lock herself in her hotel room
The original poster eventually snapped after all the mandated babysitting and locked herself in her hotel room to avoid another round of that. It could easily be said that the woman didn’t ever say no to the babysitting, but here she does mention that there were no requests for her help as the baby was practically “tossed” at her. So this situation begs the question of whether saying no would’ve actually changed things for the better. There is a chance that the family would not be very pleased with her “rebellion”. Furthermore, her fiance doesn’t seem to stand in the OP’s defense, which is also peculiar.
Overall, this is certainly a situation you wouldn’t want to get yourself into. After all, holidays are for relaxing, not for taking over someone else’s responsibilities. But it is true that the woman could’ve at least attempted to reason with the parents and say no. After all, the baby wasn’t exactly her responsibility. In any case, now we know that running away from your problems sometimes somewhat works.
Although the people in the comments didn’t see a problem with her locking herself away, most were surprised she didn’t just say “no”
What are your thoughts on this story? Do you think what the lady did was right? Or do you believe she should say a firm no, after all, there is nothing wrong with setting boundaries and prioritizing yourself?
If you were in her place, what would you have done? Would you have clearly denied or flew away from the situation? Because certain times just running away from an awful situation proves to be the ultimate solution.
