Found felony record… not sure if I should say something
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It’s not a stretch to think about asking the coach. It is a stretch to preemptively investigate people you are thinking about asking. Employers do not perform a background check until the candidate accepts a job. All you had to do here was ask the coach if she was interested in the gig. Instead, you got ahead of yourself and now you want to know if it’s okay to send her an anonymous letter because you don’t know how to bring up your concerns without looking like a total creep.
Yes, ASKING for referrals for a sitter. GREAT IDEA. That’s really the line here, is that they didn’t offer, and were never asked.
I don’t think it was wrong of you to run through publicly available sources. They’re public. It might feel like private or sensitive information, but by definition, it is not. She could run them on herself or her partner if she wanted.
Maybe it was a waste of your effort to do it on someone whom you’re not even sure would be interested/able to watch your kids.
That said, while I don’t think it’s wrong to look up public records on…anyone really…disclosing what you’ve found is a step further and creepy.
If she’s not aware you were looking into things there’s no way to spin it that won’t come off as overbearing at the best.
And honestly – what truly would be gained by sharing what you know with her (anonymously or not) at this point? It’s not as though she just started dating this guy and there’s an opporunity to warn her off – they’re committed. He’s either turned it around and is treating her well, or you know, he’s not and then I’m sure she’s well aware of his character. And you aren’t central enough in her life to be a person to help her out of that.
This is just information you get to know and sit with, nothing more.
Becaboo’s husband sounds like he is the one that did all the sleuthing.
If he interacted less with the coach than Becaboo84, and he knew she was going to ask her maybe he figured he’d just make sure she wasn’t a crazy driver and that her boyfriend wasn’t seedy. I can understand why Becaboo84 would feel defensive about her husband’s choice to poke into the life of this potential babysitter if she knows her husband to be a generally kind and respectful guy. I imagine they’ve both learned something from this experience.What made me uncomfortable about the search is that the husband could have seen there was a felony and just ruled the coach out without looking up all the details.
He went back to investigate who the assault charges involved he looked into past children, adoption, and pieced together how long ago this happened from when he thinks the coach and boyfriend started dating. That is the part that is weird to me. But it’s worth remembering that it wasn’t all Becboo84 who sat down and searched out the coach.
A big part of the reason it would be so weird to say anything is because they hadn’t even asked the coach, yet. And even if they did, it would be unlikely she would assume that meant they were going to look up her boyfriend just in case he ended up coming to the house, uninvited. I’m not sure how it’s much different if it had been the coaches mother or best friend. If they didn’t want anyone else over there, they could have said so when discussing the job with the coach. Because that isn’t information that was necessary relevant to deciding to ask her to babysit. And if it is was, they could have at least waited until it was a real possibility and not a hypothetical before doing all the sleuthing. As soon as he realized the boyfriend had a record he could have stopped snooping and started thinking about other babysitters. If they asked her and she said she might ask him to come over, they could have then asked if they could talk to him and also do a cursory background check on him.
They just got really ahead of themselves on this one and now they’re in an awkward situation as a result. I think most people on this thread recommend waiting and doing things in order next time because doing a search before asking might seem convenient but is unnecessarily invasive of this coach’s private life.
I don’t see anything wrong with doing the background check before asking. It would be very awkward to ask and then when she said yes do a check and then go back and say sorry we changed our minds about you. It makes sense to do a search first. Multiple days is a long time to assume she would have no other commitments. What if she needed a sitter while being the sitter?
The real problem I see here is that you are looking at people you don’t know very well to watch your children for a number of days. Is there some way to take your kids with you? Could you take them to a grandparent, even if the grandparent is across the country or pay to have the grandparent meet you where you are going? One of my cousins would travel with her baby while she was breastfeeding and since her mom was retired her mom would meet her at the work location and watch the baby while she had her meetings. She could run to her hotel room and feed the baby then go to another meeting.
In the end I think you need a better solution than asking relative strangers to watch your children. If you can’t find anyone then at least one of you should stay home.
I know I said this in an earlier post, but I had absolutely no concerns on whether it would be appropriate to ask MB to babysit our kiddos. She babysat quite a bit prior to graduating at the beginning of the summer and had recently mentioned that she and the boyfriend were looking to pick up extra work since they are hoping to buy a house in the next several months. So while she had not babysat for our two, because as I mentioned, we basically never need babysitters, I did not consider it a stretch asking her now.
@Kate, our children have literally had three babysitters in their lives. One was 8 years ago and was a student worker at the university daycare my oldest went to, one was the aforementioned sitter who is now in graduate school, and one is a young woman who graduated high school in May and watched our older daughter occasionally after school this past school year, but she would not be a good fit for this particular situation (I had her watch both kids one time for a couple of hours, and two kids seemed a bit difficult for her, and she generally lacks the maturity for this period of time). My children haven’t been in daycare/after school care for over two years, so we no longer know individuals in that setting who might be a good option. I am fortunate to have a work schedule where I can drop them at school in the morning and get them off the bus after school.
@Sky, Generally speaking, we don’t know MB super well, although my daughter has spent one hour per week with her for the past year, she has come to a couple of her games, will sometimes Face time her after big games, and met us at the fair one day and spent a couple of hours taking her through a sports exhibit while we did something with our younger kiddo (this was not paid babysitting-we had mentioned that we would be out there, she’d said she would be too, and asked her if she wanted to go through this sports exhibit with her because there was quite a bit on softball).As I mentioned earlier, family is not an option for us. I didn’t think I needed to provide further explanation on that point, but since there continue to be questions, my father (who had been our primary “babysitter”) unexpectedly passed away 18 months ago, my in laws just don’t want to, and my mother has guardianship of my 20 month old nephew and temporary custody of my 14 week old nephew so she has her hands full. We’ve actually filed for guardianship of the 14 week old and have a court date in October (we could not gain immediate guardianship because we live out of state, which is why my mother currently has temporary custody), which is why my husband was going to join me on a work trip since we obviously won’t be taking solo vacations with a newborn. My older sister lives out of the country, my little sister doesn’t have custody of her own children, my BIL is an alcoholic, and my SIL lives on the other side of the country and is a single parent to a school aged child. Hopefully this explanation shuts down additional questions regarding why family can’t watch our kiddos (which were totally irrelevant to my original question anyway). Side note: For those of you who have family available to watch your kids, appreciate it!! We were so spoiled by my dad, and my kids were so spoiled to have a grandpa who lived nearby and was a daily part of their lives. We all miss him immensely.
And yes, if we are unable to find an adequate sitter, of course my husband will be staying home.
@keyblade, I understand where you’re coming from, but he didn’t do any additional “investigating” besides doing the initial name search (although I guess he did continue reading the full listing that came up instead of immediately exiting out after he saw the first felony). I think it was that there had been some criminal filings due to not paying child support (which is why it showed up in this search) which then showed up as as resolved due to minor child’s adoption or something like that.Just tell her you did a little driving record check and found out some alarming things about her bf. I’m sure she’d be happy to babysit your kids.
Come on, you know it is not a normal thing to do to someone (and their partner) you haven’t employed to watch your children. She’d be creeped out.
If you thought it was totally fine and normal, why wouldn’t you just tell her?
And for those of you trying to offer helpful suggestions (checking with family, speaking to our childcare providers, looking into national care sites, etc.), I truly do appreciate it and didn’t mean to appear defensive. We have, however, already looked into all of the “easy” options.
@anon and @northern, I’m not sure why, as I followed DW over from The Frisky and while I don’t comment super regularly, and I believe this is only my third forum post, I have always tried to be kind to individuals who appear to be well intentioned (even if I disagree, and sometimes disagree strongly) and are genuinely asking for constructive feedback to their question(s). With both of you, however, that doesn’t at all seem to be the case. If you have anything helpful to say, I would absolutely love to hear it, but if you’re only commenting to be disparaging, please stop. I already understand that you disagree vehemently with a decision I made, so continuing to make the same sarcastic commentary is totally unnecessary and unhelpful.Wow, what a creepy conniving thing to do to someone. Do me a favor, tell her, hopefully she boots him to the curb and tells you to fuck off at the same time.
Here’s to your daughter striking out all next season you dishonorable sneaky human.
If you think Anon and Northern’s responses are disparaging, you either need to grow up or look up disparaging in a dictionary. You may think you come off as well-intentioned, but that does not mean everyone else feels the same way about the series of choices you and your husband made and your continued defense of your behavior. The fact that all this information is public is irrelevant. I’m an attorney; I know how easy it is to find public government records. That doesn’t make it less invasive to search those records without being prepared for what you might find. If I search public records, I assume the risk that I might find something awkward, unsettling, or downright concerning. You and your husband accessed that public information, so act like an adult and be honest with the coach if you are so concerned she doesn’t know. Instead, the only possible plan you came up with was sending an anonymous letter with life-changing information to someone you barely know. You are so concerned that this coach doesn’t know about her boyfriend’s felony domestic abuse record, but you aren’t concerned enough to tell her in person. You are the only person to benefit from an anonymous letter, free of the guilt you feel and protected from any fallout or conflict with the coach.
Anon is right. If you thought it was totally fine and normal, why won’t you just tell her what you found online?
