Have you done babysitting job as youngster?

Sure I did. Two instances come to mind:

I think I was 13 when I was asked to baby sit an infant. It was my first time babysitting anything at all.
We only had cloth-and-pin diapers then. I was changing the baby’s diaper, when, to my horror, she started screaming and a spot of blood appeared on her cheek. I’d left the open diaper pin in her reach. Her hand touched it and she reflexively gripped it and instinctively moved it toward her mouth. :(

The second time I was 14. It was night time and I was on the phone with my boyfriend, and I heard some sort of noise at the back door (BTK had just hit his first victims in Wichita and it was all over the news.) I put the phone down and barely cracked the door…and the door came BUSTING open and this freaking ST BERNARD DOG JUMPED ON ME!!!! Scared the living shit out of me. The people who I was babysitting for didn’t have a dog.
I finally realized it was “Saint,” a dog who lived next door to me. The house I was babysitting at was just up the road from my house, within easy, peasy walking distance…maybe a block, block and a half. I guess the goof had come to check on me. Who knows. Maybe BTK was lurking about and Saint rescued me.
Ew. I baby sat 3 or 4 times and I remember once when the parents, who were friends of my mom and dad’s, came home and the dad, who was drunk, insisted on driving me home. It confused me but I said OK. We got in the car, he pulled around this curve that left all the houses briefly out of sight, and started trying to kiss me. I jumped out of the car and ran home. Never said anything to my parents.)

Of course, I was constantly “babysitting” my little sisters from the time I was 5 or 6. Saved my one sister’s life a bunch of times. She was so damn accident prone!

Me & my elder brother babysat our next door neighbour’s 2 kids, we were around 12/13 & they must’ve been maybe 4/7.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened other than we got bored & our mam took over after only a couple of hours, still got paid though but

I did. It was another lucky accident and another example of something I was forced into that I turned out to be good at. I tried very hard to enforce vows of secrecy on clients lest word get out to my peers. But I didn’t stop to think that my little charges themselves were certain to “snatch the covers off me”. My humiliation was assured from the outset.

As the eldest of four, I was an unpaid babysitter for years. So when my parents’ friends wanted a babysitter, they often called me. I stayed with a lot of kids on weekend evenings during my early and middle teens. They were pretty routine occasions, nothing very memorable at all. I do recall that I was usually invited to have some snacks or desserts that they left for me, but I never did, not once. I didn’t honestly believe it was ok, so I left the cakes and sodas untouched.

Twice I accepted babysitting jobs while I was in college, and they were both weird. One was for a faculty member’s young family. The two-year-old boy woke up with night terrors in the middle of the night—something I became familiar with later on when my own were that age—and I couldn’t stop him from crying. He screamed for hours until he wore himself (and me and the other kids) out. I still have no idea how I could have calmed him.

The other was for a middle-aged woman who was deeply intellectually challenged. Her elderly mother had a night job and needed someone to stay with the daughter, fix supper for her, and keep her company. I cooked hot dogs and listened to her chatter endlessly and repetitively about her “buhdie,” her parakeet. I thought that evening was never going to end. The woman asked me only that once. I was as nice as possible to the daughter and did everything expected of me, but my patient endurance just doesn’t take that form.

I was left home alone with the younger siblings for several hours every day from about 7 years old.

There were some scary moments, a few things that should have gotten stitches but didn’t, but nothing permanently lasting.

I was a nanny for a thirteen month old when I was 17. That kid could throw an epic conniption. I never did figure out why it happened but he’d scream for forty minutes, an hour at a stretch. I had to applaud his stamina.

Haha, I have a great babysitting story.
I was 14 and occasionally babysat for the family that lived behind us in my neighborhood. They had 3 little kids, ages 2, 3 and 5. One afternoon while sitting the 5 yr. old boy climbed out an upstairs window onto the roof and while I was getting him back inside the 2 year old girl managed to get her hands on a jar of Vaseline and rub the entire thing all over herself and her hair. It took about an hour of bathing and shampooing to de-grease the kid.

Then, not knowing any better, I failed to drain the macaroni and cheese and just mixed the milk and butter and cheese powder into the pit of mac and water. haha I was very responsible but nobody ever told me you had to DRAIN the water off the pasta. The kids ate their mac-n-cheese soup without complaint. lol
This was in about 1973.

I was 14 babysitting a 6 year old and three year old. Six year old not a problem, playing with wooden trucks and three year old just got a “hissy fit” going because he wanted to eat the trucks. Not an option, so I’m holding the little one in my lap – - -and he head butts me with the back of his head in the nose. Blood everywhere, “hissy fit” stopped like a pail of cold water was poured on him. Later found out my nose was indeed broken and shifted, my glasses will never fit without a lot of adjusting the nose pads.

I had have let him eat the damn trucks! Man…I’d be tempted to force feed him the truck after that! Ow. Shit head.

A friends little 3 yr. old son was swinging around a hard plastic baseball bat once and thwacked her right on the outer ankle bone. She went down like a house of cards and was writhing in pain. Kids! haha

Yeah.. some kids can be nasty..

I can tame nasty kids pretty quickly. Let me alone with them for just a moment, without their parents, let me talk to them, and from that time on I can control them with silent but dreadful glances.

When my husband’s daughter was here, the youngest was 2. He was kind of a shit. I had given them all home made Popsicle. A little later I wanted to be sure all the plastic sticks were rounded up.
I said, loud enough for my voice to carry, “Where are everyone’s sticks? Bring them here!”
The 2 year old stormed into the kitchen, angrily gestured at the oak kitchen table and yelled “IT’S RIGHT THERE!” and indeed, it was. Right there on the wood, Popsicle and all, melting on the table. I shrugged my shoulders at that, but stopped him in his tracks when he turned to storm out of the room. I snapped, “Hold on! Right there!” He spun around, eyes wide in shock, and I pinned him with my eyes (perfected that from years of teaching 30 million kids all at once, and discipline across the room at the same time.) and said, in a low, dangerous voice, “You will not ever, ever shout at me again, is that clear.” He just nodded mutely, mouth open, caught like a deer in the headlights.
For the rest of the night, every time he did something remotely “bad,” he’d nervously glance over at me. If I felt he should stop I’d just give the barest shake of my head and he’d stop instantly. He was scared of me! And he should be.
Towards the end of the visit though, I found myself on the couch, all the kids around me, the two year old snuggled up against me. I was showing them all the Pokeys I’d caught. The 6 year old was doing an excellent job of reading those crazy names.—Yeah, I turned it into a lesson plan. I usually do. I told him how impressed I was.
Then the 2 year old started repeating the names after the 6 year old read them, which gave me the opening to give him big hug and tell him what a great job he was doing too. He gave me a big smile, eyes shining, and I think he loves me.
And now that kid is mine. I won’t have any more trouble with him. And we can commence with the business of Having Fun With Gramma.

I babysat a lot. Started at 11, got serious about it at 12. Babysat 4 or 5 nights a week. Did some entire weekends for a mom that left town for squash tournaments – dad locked himself in the basement to work on a math text he was writing. Made enough to pay for most of university and have a deposit on a used car after I graduated. I babysat a lot. I was one of the only teens who would babysit groups of kids (families of 3 – 7 children). One family had seven girls under the age of 10 – they couldn’t get adult sitters in. I’d come , but I charged a good premium for that many.

My mother always said that was why I didn’t have kids – I’d toilet-trained too many while I was in my teens. I was a very efficient toilet-trainer. Two weekends, maybe three and we were done.

Wow. Awesome girl, you @BellaB!

I was a master of toilet-training. Apple juice and books and patience. Also – no disposables while training. It’s kind of neat that doctors now tell people that – no super-absorbent disposables while toilet-training.

Oh, I almost forgot, babysitting for another family once when I snuck my boyfriend over after the kiddies were tucked in for the night. He ran out the back door when the parents pulled into the driveway. haha
I was 15.

I feel like pull-ups completely defeat the purpose of potty training, @BellaB. It’s much more uncomfortable when you poop or pee in regular cloth underwear.

I cloth diapered my kid and he was potty trained at and early 2. I used to see three and four year olds with pullups when I was teaching daycare. It was baffling.

I used pull ups at night and when we went out. The one time, when my daughter was about 2ish that I took her out in “big girl” panties she wet herself in the store and I had no back up. Figures.