Friday 22 February 2013

Today I Learnt..... Kids' Parents Hold Grudges

So I have these awesome kids I get to babysit; two adorable 6 year old twin boys and a fiesty 3 year old girl. Last week Friday I picked them up from school for the very first time, and while it was awesome, that day I learnt how to immediately piss off a parent. Once I had finally found my way through their school to their assembly (from where I had to pick them up) I had to start searching through the 200 odd students to find them.

Which I did. Actually they found me. They bounded up to me with huge smiles, introduced me to their friend and told me he was coming with us for a sleep over. Now their mother had told me that there was a friend coming for a sleep over, so I wasn't really surprised. So all of us headed out into the playground ready for the walk home, when I saw the boys' prep teacher. I thought I may just check that I didn't have to sign them out or something like you have to do at kinder.

So I approached the prep teacher, explained who I was (she was lovely by the way, prep teachers are real saints) and who I was taking home. I explained the whole kid sleeping over thing, really just making sure that it was okay for me to take this kid home, and she was like "his mother is actually just there, we should check with her". Meanwhile all the kids are like "Bron, it's fine, we've already checked with his mum!" and "Bron, let's go, we can just ring his mum if we have to check again".

I went with the prep teacher to the boy's mum and the prep teacher goes "Is it okay that Bron takes your kid home, she's the boys' babysitter, and I understand he's going for a sleepover".

And then the mother cracks it.

She turns to her boy and goes "What sleepover? Your dad is waiting for you in the pick up line! You were meant to be at swimming 10min ago" and the boy runs off to his dad. She turns to me and goes "You can't just take children you know!" and then she turns to the prep teacher and goes "I can't believe you would let my kid go home with a stranger". And then she stalked off.

Yes, that's right, I pretty much just stole a child. It turns out the friend coming for a sleepover was a different kid and was being dropped off after dinner. So I felt a bit guilty about that, not as much as I should have considering I almost committed a crime

Anyway,

Today I had an awesome day with the 3 year old girl, fielding all sorts of important questions, such as:

(While she's hungrily eating her lunch) "Bron, why do we have to wee? It's so annoying, I just want to eat my sushi" and then runs off to the toilet.

And "Bron, our pool is blue and the sky is blue. If I can float in the pool, why can't I float in the sky?"

Both excellent questions considering they came from a kid that spent a large amount of time today completely covered in a towel pretending to be an egg.

We went and picked the boys up, just like last week, and it all went smoothly this time. We played on the playground for a while and while they were playing I saw the mother a few metres away from me. She looked at me. And I smiled. And she death-stared me.

Turns out parents don't forgive and forget when you try and steal their child.
Lesson learnt.

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