becboo84
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Ohmygoodness, I feel like a lot of these comments need to be moved to a separate thread. Regardless of the intentions, the OP has to feel like she’s being berated again and again (and again…) and being told the same things again and again.
I’m with Juliecatherine and the others 100% on this one. OP, I am so sorry this happened to you. You did nothing to deserve this, and your former friend took advantage of you in your own home.
Kate, from your very first post, you seemed to misidentify the issue: “The real issues are you’re a problem drinker and you surround yourself with “friends” you can’t trust.” No, the real issue here is that she was sexually assaulted and has such a messed up mindset that she’s questioning whether her sexual assault means she cheated on her boyfriend.
I don’t plan on saying anything, but I do plan on being more attentive moving forward. As I said, during my limited interactions with the boyfriend, he has always been kind and friendly to my daughter, and I’ve never seen anything weird between him and MB either.
To answer some of the other questions that cropped up: I assume MB views our relationship similarly to me (friendly, but not friends). I try to always be appreciative and generous with my kids’ coaches (and expect my kids to be the same), so I have generally had good relationships with them.
I agree 100% that childcare workers/coaches/etc should have a personal/private life that is of no business to their clients/families. I probably disagree that this particular information falls under that category. Side note: I am always surprised when I get FB requests from these individuals, and accept as to not be rude, but then promptly unfollow because I generally don’t want to know what’s going on.
I do appreciate all of the feedback, but I definitely wish it had not gotten so heated and so off track at times!
Hahaha, I felt like I had to include that I sent snack money, or I was just sure someone would comment, “But your daughter probably got hungry/thirsty while she was with her, and then MB had to spend her own hard earned money on your child…” and then I’d have to comment, “Well actually… sorry again if I wasn’t totally clear…” 🙂
@Curly, I would never ask someone to “donate” their time to my child. I’m not sure if my original post was unclear (or again, perhaps I didn’t provide every single iota of detail because it didn’t seem relevant), but it was basically the conversation below:
1.) MB: Hey girl, you have any big plans this weekend? (speaking to my daughter as she arrived for her lesson after school)
2.) Daughter: Actually, we’re heading to the fair tonight
3.) MB: Oh, cool. Me too. Have you been through the sports exhibit out there yet?
4.) Daughter: Nope, not yet. We’ll probably go in the new few days.
5.) MB: I’m taking my niece through it tonight who’s a couple of years younger than you. You want to join us?
6.) Daughter: Yes!! Mom, may I please?!
7.) Me: Sure, sweetie. MB, that’s so nice of you to ask! What time and where should we meet you?And I sent money for my daughter, MB and MB’s niece in case they wanted to get snacks.
@anon, I think I have read through all of the comments, and I didn’t see anyone who expressed frustration with you for having a different opinion than them. I know you took one of my posts that way as well, and my concern was strictly that you continued making the same comments (after I had already acknowledged that I understood that you disagreed with my initial decision) in increasingly demeaning and sarcastic ways. By the end, it felt to me that you were actually being kind of aggressive, which definitely took me by surprise.
And for the final time (seriously, I promise not to say it again), this was not a background check. This was literally a name based search through our county website. Signed consent, fingerprints and an ID are needed for a background check, and they can only be done by licensed individuals with access to state and/or federal databases.
So this has gotten way out in the weeds from my initial post, and I am pretty surprised/disappointed with the name calling, etc in a few of the comments. I know the DW community is better than that.
And yes, if I had known how many tangential issues were going to crop up from my initial question, it would have been helpful to provide additional information in that post, but at the time, they seemed totally irrelevant.
Just yuck dude, get off the page. What kind of person wishes ill things on a child?
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.
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.
I hate to keep repeating myself, but this was not a background check. Signed consent, fingerprints and an ID are necessary for a background check. And again, with the exception of checking the sex offender registry semi-regularly (which I truly hope every parent is doing), I have probably looked up a half dozen people over the 10 years that I’ve had kids. I have no idea what, in any of my posts, made it seem like I was regularly looking up information on friends/neighbors/acquaintances.
@Kate, I had already reached out to Care.com and a local version that offers similar services several weeks ago, and there was no one available who met our needs. I live in rural America, so I am sure the options are greater in more metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, family is not an option for us, and all of our friends have multiple children of their own and would not be able to watch our kiddos at our house. Our older daughter has quite a bit of anxiety, and I think it would have been extremely difficult for her if the person staying with them was essentially a stranger anyway. We are also in the incredibly fortunate position that we almost never need a babysitter, so we do not have a list of individuals we can turn to when needed.
@Ruby, when I babysat in my early 20s, the families almost always offered that it was fine for my boyfriend/fiancé to come over after the kids were in bed, or to hang out with us if it was over a prolonged period of time. Of course I would have never made the assumption if it was not made abundantly clear that he was welcome, but in my experience that is pretty standard. We have also offered the same thing for our previous babysitter who is currently in grad school and therefore not an option.I absolutely get that many people on this post think it was inappropriate that I attempted to look up their driving records before I spoke to them, and I will reconsider that moving forward. However, it also seems like a lot of assumptions are being made that are outside the realm of anything I have said or even indicated, and that the crux of my question has been lost in many of the comments.
