There is no denying that parenting is hard work and everyone manages to make some mistakes. It’s also pretty time consuming, which is why some parents will regularly employ a nanny or a babysitter to find the time they need. As you can imagine, boy do they have some stories to tell.

Someone asked babysitters online to share their stories of kids that really seem like they are going to have issues when they grow up and folks gave their best stories. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to add your own thoughts and examples in the comments section below.

#1

I was a casual babysitter, but when I lived in LA I babysat for a family that lived in a giant house on a hill and they refused to say no to their kid, and I wasn’t allowed to either. She wanted to do something dangerous and I wouldn’t let her, and she told me her parents let her do it. I said “well I’m responsible for your safety right now so I can’t let you do that.” When her parents got home they scolded me for saying no. That was the last time I babysat for them.

Image credits: springflingqueen

#2

Knew a kid whose parents thought it was funny to tell him the wrong names for things. Socks were called turtles. Put your turtles on. S**t like this. Wondered why he had screaming meltdowns in daycare then kindergarten etc until he was finally able to read by himself. In grade 4. Because spelling turtle s o c k doesn't give you any head starts.

Image credits: dropthemasq

#3

I'm a teacher, not a babysitter. But, when kids are afraid to go home or have their parents contacted about anything, there is something going on that raises red flags (and will, possibly, leave the kid fu**ed up for years to come).

I had a student a few years ago who broke down in tears in front of me, begging me not to email his mom. He had cheated on a test and was so scared of his mother finding out that, after the crying, he threw up in the trash can.

If you are that scared of your parents, then something is majorly wrong.

Image credits: Onyx_Owl

#4

I have a friend who worked in a daycare right out of college."

"There was a baby who came in everyday dirty and hungry, so when she changed the baby's diaper at the end of the day she would write the date and time on the diaper with a sharpie."

"That baby came back the next day with the same diaper.... 12 hours later. After a few days of that she called CPS.

#5

Not a babysitter, but I think my cousin might be a good example in this situation. He moves around so much that he literally lives in a boat, he has done school virtual schooling his entire life, so his only friends are his cousins, and his mother is both a Covid denier and an anti-vaxer. I feel bad for the poor kid.

Image credits: jkvader06

#6

Babysat this kid while I was in high school. He was like 8, I was 17. He got thrown out of mainstream school for flipping a desk on his teacher. I think the biggest “this kid is going to be screwed up when he’s older” was either when he showed me his collection of knives he stole from the kitchen or when he took me to see his dads p*** collection. Yeah, didn’t work there too long.

Image credits: Top-Hat1341

#7

I'm not a babysitter, but a relative of mine was for a short period of time. She said this 4 or 5 year old kid would tell her about how he wanted to cut into his pets to "see how they work." The creepy behavior continued, she brought it up to the mother who didn't seem to care. One day she arrived, and the kid brought her a handful of various teeth that weren't human, still bloody. That was the last time she babysat.

Image credits: anon

#8

Not a babysitter, but a Paraprofessional at an Elementary School. First Grade teacher goes around the classroom asking the kids what they want to be when they grow up. One of the boys says "I want to go to prison like my Dad!".

Image credits: CharSea

#9

I used to work at a daycare and this one kid kept trying to stick his finger in the electrical sockets (the sockets were taped off so he couldn’t) and would fall from pretty high places and hit his head. I have no clue how he’s still alive but I now believe he is immortal.

Image credits: Wii_wii_baget

#10

I babysat for my apartment complex when i was younger, practically running a day care out of my apartment. I had this one boy, Max, who was just reckless with everything. He would listen to me, but any time one of the others needed attention, he’d disregard me and what I’d told him. I stopped this kid from getting multiple concussions, I made sure he didn’t play in traffic, but the one day he had an attitude and wouldn’t hold my hand when crossing the street, s**t hit the fan. People would speed through the complex, and a large SUV ended up hitting him while I was trying to get him out of the way (difficult with 8 other kids). It wasn’t just some rando either... it was his OWN MOTHER that hit him!!! She had me stop babysitting until he was back on his feet and terrorizing her again, but I wasn’t gonna take responsibility of this wild child and any potential injuries that came to him under my watch. He was a good kid, just did stupid s**t constantly, like trying to dive in the shallow end of a pool, jumping out of trees that are 15 ft up, running up to any and all dogs to pet them (i was a dog sitter too and there were 4 or 5 dogs in the complex that were too aggressive for him to be doing that), and it was genuinely a matter of when, not if, he was going to get hurt again and I can’t defend myself for his injuries.

#11

A twelve year old with no physical or developmental disability still needing his mother to take him into the family restroom.

(My nephew).

Image credits: NathanielleS

#12

S****y parents that doesn't care. I once babysat a little boy, from the time he was 1-3. His mom was busy going on vacation and partying. I remember as he grew he had less and less clothes, because he outgrown the ones he had. I remember he only had 1 pair of socks, because his mom would lose every f*****g sock. I felt ashamed delivering him to the daycare with two different socks, all the time. It may not seem like a big deal, but look at it from a different POV: if you can't take care of a pair of socks, how are you gonna take care of a baby?

Image credits: SantaStoleMyCar

#13

Smooth time.


I babysat a 6 year old and his parents has a few strange rules, but Smooth Time was by far the worst. My first day while walking through the routine, I was told every evening after bath time, I was to cover this kid head to toe in petroleum jelly to "prevent cracks in his skin" aka dry skin. It happened every morning as well, but the mom or dad did it then. I really don't think it was anything malicious, the other rules were similarly overly-cautious like the kid had to wear shoes at all times to prevent him hurting his feet, but that kid is gonna have a hard time at his first sleepover.


EDIT: What made it extra weird was the kid was extremely smart for his age and well articulated, so I don't understand why the mother insisted he needed help. I felt like he could do it himself.

Image credits: Rossthedinoguy

#14

Not a babysitter but had a classmate that had parents that knowingly taught him the wrong things to avoid him getting confused and eventually pulled him out of school after only a few years of him being in our school. They said for example that negative numbers don't actually exist, decimal points are just full stops for big numbers and so on and so forth. Parents also gave him waaaaay too much free reign; I live in an area of London that isn't the best for crime, i.e. you shouldn't really be letting children go to school by themselves until at least age 14-15 and if so at least with a few friends. By age 8 his parents allowed him to go to school by himself (he lived about 15 minutes away). He was also extremely clumsy and could be very rude

TL;DR Had a classmate whose parents were too lazy to teach him the right things, told him his education was full of lies and eventually home-schooled him, they let him go to school by himself aged 8 and he was clumsy and kinda rude.

Image credits: anon

#15

Had a kid who doused his mother's bed with her and her current pump in it, with lighter fluid, and was sitting in the floor trying to light matches.

He was just shy of 5. ?.

Image credits: quietly_consumed

#16

Honestly, parents who don't care about the kid's education, for whatever reason. Probably, the parent didn't graduate high school in the first place and doesn't place a whole lot of value in education. Many of those kids (source: former teacher) end up working at McDonald's or struggling to find some other work. They don't even get into trades because you have to go to some kind of school for those, and school just isn't something they can "do".

This happened with my step-daughter, who is an absolutely wonderful person but her mom never cared how she did in school or even if she went. Hence her trying to make a living now at 25 by working in day cares, which does NOT pay very well. She wants to do other things but they'd all require school and she just says "I hate school.".

Image credits: DTownForever

#17

They were taught the original wording to the song "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" by their parents. The slurred version.

Image credits: DeFactoLyfe

#18

Probably not f****d up but when I taught skiing we taught lesson that met every week and here was this one girl(maybe 10?) who absolutely hated boys and every snack time she would go around and try punching all the boys.

#19

Kind of a different "this kid will be f****d up" and more "this kid is/will be an a*****e". I babysat for a family for years with 2 sons, 2 years apart. The younger boy was always sweet, loved animals, active, and much more social. He had a lot of issues with school but in general, a likable kid. The older boy? Selfish, callous, constantly complained, and made it clear he didn't care about anyone's feelings. He would bully his younger brother and purposely hurt him past normal sibling rivalry or conflict. I've never seen him show anyone any real affection (and I've known this kid from age 8-17, and for years this was every day), and again, he has had special contempt for his younger brother. He only ever had one true friend who he ended up alienating around age 10 because he was such a jerk. I doubt he's got any other close friends now and i doubt he'd be able to get a girlfriend with how selfish and obnoxious he is. His parents are great people, and his brother is a great kid. The parents struggle to see his true colors, but his brother sure knows. I think they'll be truly shocked when they see their sons basically want nothing to do with each other when they're adults.

#20

The boy took me to his shed and showed me a bunch of road kill, you figure it out.

Image credits: Ieatkids2020

#21

Over the summer I was a nanny for a pretty wealthy family. They were great and super down to earth and the kids were awesome and polite. However, they had a family visit for a few days. The family was from LA and the dad was a Hollywood agent. I don't really care for celebrities, pop culture or brands but it's all this family would talk about. They had two children and the older girl, who was around 6, said/screamed the following things to me over the few days:

"Get me conditioner because my hair is important!" (after throwing a goddamn fit when I told her there was no conditioner for her bathroom because it was in the room where the baby was sleeping)

"Nanny, get me food." (literally snapped her finger above her head)

"Build me a fort or I'm telling them that you should be fired!" (after being so incredibly mean to the other children and constantly complaining how bored she was in a house full of toys, art, and swimming pool outside)

I shut this s**t down so fast and told her to never, EVER speak to me or another adult like that. I told her parents and they acted mortified but never dolled out consequences or an apology. She put on a full face of make up everyday and wore heels.

Image credits: troby07

#22

When I was around 12 I'd babysit this family with 4 kids, usually for around 9 hours at a time. The older two were manipulative a******s who would convince the younger two(twins) to do what they wanted knowing that the twins would be the only ones punished. I caught on pretty fast, partially because I got the chance to babysit the twins alone and they were angels. The oldest especially scared the hell out of me, she was a monster, I'd regularly call my mom crying and begging for help because she stopped bothering to try to seem like a good kid after I started punishing all four of them when the older two got the twins into trouble, and she knew I saw through her. She was regularly on the front of the town paper for doing nice things, and went to church etc, so everybody who didn't know her well loved her. She is a teenager now and is still a manipulative person who tries to ruin peoples lives if she doesn't get her way.

Another kid I worry about is a total sweetheart, but he seems to have a very addictive personality and is incredibly competitive. His gaming time has to be very carefully regulated or it will completely take over his life and he'll start getting anger issues. He can't stand losing games to the point where he kicked the board over and stormed off crying when we played snakes and ladders because I landed on a ladder, despite still only being half as far along the board as him.

Edit: Also the two boys around 5 and 7 who made a game the revolved around trying to grab my boobs. I don't really know what I expected after their 13 year old sister/my classmate told me she had trained the 2 year old to fetch her beer on demand.

Image credits: anon

#23

I was babysitting my little brothers one day and they wanted to know about Bigfoot so I told them and I said it probably wasn’t real so nothing to worry about. Then my littlest brother (4) said “if I see Bigfoot I’ll climb onto his back and rip his skin off” I didn’t know what to say so I gave them ice cream.

Image credits: injail_out-soon

#24

A local gymnastics 'academy' (read place for parents to spend a lot on kids to take gymnastics classes, definitely not a place where children develop gymnastics careers), had an attached preschool that was operated independently by a woman who ran it well.

Gymnastics academy owner is an older eastern European who has 2 problems. 1 for some reason a lot of his coaches are single moms who need daycare to teach, and 2 he is obviously banging one of them.

So enter his genius plan to open an unlicensed daycare that I operate. Early 20s kid he finds off Craigslist.

Mom he is clearly banging is about as sharp as a box of rocks, and routinely drops her 2 daughters off with no food.

The concerning thing about one of these girls particularly is she is somehow rather sharp. But with no real healthy life or outlets, this just means she is crazy manipulative. I mean we are talking a 7 year old that is about to be able to totally run circles around her own mother.

I can't imagine this girl ended up within any healthy relationships, she was learning that relationships were transactional and about power dynamics by watching her mother, and that she could manipulate anyone in her life to get what she wanted with no concept of long term consequences.

#25

Baby sat a kid. That kid is 8, all she does all day is watch youtube videos. Her parents don't care that youtube is just taking her down wormholes - so she now believes that the world is flat and she's obsessed with watching people open these weird dolls that have a gazillion plastic parts. Her parents buy them for her and she opens them and discards them. She is 8 and still has temper tantrums cause her parents reward them, and her parents who don't really like each other much, neither of them provide any discipline what so ever. Babysat once, once was enough - cause I said no to her and she hit me. Cause her parents have never said no and she has never had consequences for her behavior. Kid don't have any real friends - cause her parents gave her no instructions in how to be a real human being. It's a shame.

Image credits: No_cats_in_hell

#26

In this instance it was when I was a preschool teacher but still applies.


A boy joins the school (age 3 years) with his almost 5 year old brother. 3 year old boy (let's call him Billy) has been enrolled and expelled from 3 other preschools in a year.


Billy beats other kids and teachers. Not hits beats them. I saw him grab a girl by the hair and start punching her repeatedly in the face because she wouldn't share her toy.


Here's the rub though. Billy obviously has issues, but the brother is making such a fuss to parents and other adults, Billy is never without being corrected. Billy once threw a ball to his brother and it hit the brother in the face by accident. The older brother said nothing until he realizes I saw it happen. The brother immediately falls to his knees and fake cries about Billy hurting him again "just like always".


The parents inform us that at home the brothers are not allowed near each other, and since Billy is a handful, they put Billy in his area of the house and that is where he eats and plays separate from mom, dad, and brother.


So Billy is absolutely f****d when he grows up. He already has some underlying issues but he will never get the chance to work through them because he's locked in his room away from his family and has no one who loves him. Even though he punched me in the face, I feel sorry for him.

#27

Not a babysitter, but.. my son was friends with a few of the kids around the neighborhood (we've moved since) they all went to school together, rode the same bus. There was one girl, her back story is she's adopted and knows it. Constantly throws that in her mother's face. Her mother is really sweet but is also rather dumb. The father unfortunately dropped dead early on of a heart attack or something. So she's living and being raised by a woman who has no clue and her grandmother who should be in a nursing home. It's not as rough as it sounds though, the mother is (an actual, not the fake kind) good Christian and is providing pretty well for her daughter. my point is there's no excuse for the way this girl acts. She's got a bad attitude, loves to brag about herself, is always stomping off to 'run away' if she's not having fun, rolls her eyes and talks back to anyone and worst of all she's manipulative. She's been bf/gf with just about every other kid in the little group. Every time she has a new boyfriend she tells them they can only play with her thus alienating them from the other friends. These are 10 & 11 year olds. So as far as I know it's just little kid version of bf/gf. Yet still too young to even think about relationships. I told my son not to fall for it. All the other kids are annoyed with her and just go along to shut her up. They just want to be kids and ride bikes around the neighborhood and play, but this girl is determined to make everything about her and brings nothing but drama.

Tldr: little girl is a Karen

Edit: I forgot the question and just ranted about this brat. But I'd say the girl is doomed. The mother dosen't know how to deal with her. Coddles her instead of using discipline.

#28

My erstwhile best friend married a woman he shouldn't have. She was always treated as second class growing up, while her brother was a golden child who could do no wrong. The brother grew up to be a crack addict, and my friend's wife wanted to adopt their two crack babies since she couldn't seem to get pregnant herself. The younger one was a little slow but an OK kid. The older one was OFF from infancy, and nothing but trouble growing up. The kind of kid with zero empathy, regard for others, or care for rules, norms, or values of any kind whatsoever.

My friend was a pushover to his wife's weird oppositional defiant personality. All decisions raising the boy were basically "the opposite of whatever the husband thought was best." Her adopted son was now the Golden Child, and he was relegated to the inferior sibling role.

Every time I talked to him, it was long stories about the trouble J had gotten into, and the futile efforts that had been made to correct or improve the behavior, and conflicts with his wife over literally every aspect of raising him.

Eventually, they got pregnant and had a daughter of their own. My blood ran cold.

Last time I ever heard from him, he mentioned J would no longer be living with them because *something really bad* happened. He was around 13 by then. ಠ_ಠ.

#29

I've worked in several kindergartens.


For me, most of the kids I thought that about.. Well, it wasn't their fault. They had just been dealt a really bad hand in life, and I knew it would take so much work for them to get ahead.


One kid, he was 5. His mother was diagnosed with scizophrenia, and this kid lived with a foster family, who did the best they could do.


This mother had basically "babied" him, resulting in this poor 5 year-old having no social skills at all. He would get into conflicts with other kids because he didn't understand their games and would interrupt them and they would, as a result, tell him to go away. He would then be sad, and took his sadness out on the kids by hitting them. He also had very bad verbal skills. When I first met him, I barely understood what he was saying. His tantrums reminded me of a much younger child. He also LOVED his mother. Since she had raised him by herself, she was his whole world.


The most heartbreaking situation was one day, when his mother came to visit him. This was after he had been moved to his foster family, and the mother was only allowed to see him with supervision. We had an agreement that she could come visit him in kindergarten for a few hours every week. So she showed up, and he ran into her arms. Two hours later, we had to physically pry him off her. He wanted to go home with his mom, and he could not let go of that. He didn't stop screaming until two hours later when he tired himself out and fell asleep.


I thought to myself that day "This kid is not growing up to be a functioning adult.".


It broke my heart. He was a really sweet kid. Funny, curious, inquisitive. I still send him a thought once in a while. I hope he's doing okay.

#30

Had a friends five year old little boy kill his kitten while I was making lunch because he didn’t want to play with it anymore.

Called the friend right away and told her and said I was gonna bury it in the backyard and that when she got home we needed to sit down and explain why what he did was wrong.

That evening we did just that but he failed to see how killing a living thing was different from throwing away a puzzle or book he didn’t want anymore. Needless to say I told her I could not continue watching him and that he needs some help. She understood and did try therapy, although she said that did not go well and he wasn’t allowed back. I moved out of that state a year later and she moved back to her home state but I always wonder how he turned out or if he will be the next Ted Bundy or what not as he would just be about 22 now.

#31

When I lived in Canada and worked as a nanny, I used to do casual babysitting on the side for a number of local families. One of them, well - the parents were cool people with basically good hearts, but they should never have been parents. Their youngest son had the video of the original Michael Keaton/Jack Nicholson 'Batman' screened at his fourth birthday party, then 'Army of Darkness' at his fifth; the fifth birthday party was attended by the then four year old that I was nanny to, and I had to play dumb and tell my employers that I had no idea why their son was running round the garden with a Super Soaker shouting "This is my boomstick!" The parents were also ex-hippies who hauled their son and his two older sisters round in a bus following the Grateful Dead, and they bought their son a "Can You Find Stoned Waldo" T shirt at one of the shows; when the kid wore this shirt to school before he turned six, he was made to take it off and turn it inside out before putting it back on, and when asked if he knew why he'd been told to do this replied, "'Cause there's illegal activity on it, but my dad says it's not illegal if you're sick." Listen, I am completely 420 friendly, and I love my horror movies, but a child that young does not need to be exposed to things like this...

#32

My sister and I "babysat" our cousin's kids for a summer. Like she invited us to come down, hang out, see the kids. Then like 3 days before we were due to come down, she got a job. She had nowhere to put the kids, so asked us if we'd be okay watching them for "a few hours" as she'd "always have people stopping by" (This was, dear God, almost a decade ago, way before Covid). This was not the case. She'd wake up with the kids, get them breakfast, get them occupied, then catch a ride to work. I'd usually wake up with the baby crawling into my bed for cuddles. We would be in charge of these kids from about 8:30am to usually 6pm. Lunch was usually either more cereal, fruit, ice pops, or leftovers from dinner. Then some adult (there were 3; my cousin, her husband, and the really creepy guy who rented the garage and kept inviting my sister and my cousin's oldest (similar in age) to sit on his lap) would come home with dinner or the groceries to whip together a dinner. It was the renter who usually brought groceries, and I'd have to abandon all the kids on my sister and "help him". He kept saying I reminded him of his wife, and I didn't like him very much. He used to insist I wear an apron, and he once came over while we were wrapping up time in the neighbor's pool, and he invited me to join him in the kitchen in just the apron. I told him I had to lie down and couldn't help him with dinner and just locked myself in the bathroom until one of the kids needed to use it and I had calmed down some. He was a monster.

My cousins husband would always bring something from the fast food alley he worked in. Drop the food off on the table. Tap each kid gently on the head, mutter something about "Daddy needs to lie down" if someone got in his face all excited about something, then go lock himself in their bedroom and play video games until some ungodly hour. It was ... awkward to say the least. After awhile we kind of wanted to get paid, and not in Taco Bell anymore. Being polite kids, of course, we'd tell our parents when they called all the adventures we'd been on. All the fun we were having. It was such a weird summer, it felt like some really long fever dream. That might be because the AC liked to quit. We finally had to go because school was starting soon and our parents had started to realize they probably better collect their kids. I haven't spoken to my cousins in many years, because of politics. I don't know what became of their renter.

But about the kids. The last picture I saw of any of them, was probably about 4 years ago. The girl, the oldest one, is a spitting image of her Mom, right down to the sad eyes that have already seen far too much. The middle boys kind of blur together, their Irish twins, and similar in personality. They love playing video games like their Dad, I know that much. The baby is nonverbal autistic. Love the little kid, very concerned about him, but I can't do anything. They've had another baby, I don't know anything about him. The girl, I believe, just had a baby of her own. Like her mother. She's not graduating high school either, most likely. It's kind of sad really. We almost reconnected recently, a cousin we share was getting married, then her Dad died (of Covid, we think, but they think its all a hoax (one of the reasons we don't speak)). My Dad got upset at her Facebook rant and started a fight and we got dis invited from the wedding. Probably wouldn't have been wise to go.

#33

I was a preschool teacher for 2 years. I worked with some children who were not meeting developmental milestones, such as speech delays, extreme lack of social skills, or feeding themselves. The parents didn’t know and/or care about the missed milestones because they didn’t care enough about their child. The teachers would tell the parents about their child not meeting developmental milestones. The parents refused to change anything in the home environment.

#34

Worked in a daycare.

Kid has no chance honestly.

Mom is a raging alcoholic and mentally ill, they have transient housing (occasional homelessness) and this kid is angry.

He stomped a baby bird on the playground, enjoyed kicking the teacher and strangled two puppies by carrying them around by their necks.
He kicked the teacher hard enough to leave bruises and laughed.

This was a preK. He was 5.

He moved away and is now around 8. I won't be surprised at all to see his name in newspapers in a decade that he's killed a bunch of women or something.

#35

Babysat my younger brother. My mom and stepdad don’t give a f**k. My mom does she’ll help him with homework and stuff make sure his school is good but other than that if u want to eat chips and play video games all day go ahead! Stepdad is deadbeat who smokes and drinks when he’s not working. He doesn’t rlly have any morals and now that I don’t live there I can’t help him as much. :/.

#36

I babysit my six-year-old brother. He doesn’t think things through, like most kids at that age, but he is used to snuggling with my parents, and my mom not stopping him from doing inappropriate things (putting things strait, I’m in highschool and a woman).

So one night, maybe 12:00 AM, I was watching him while my parents were out. He was watching Spongebob and I ended up dozing off. Suddenly, I feel a hand grasp my breast and another grasp my inner thigh. I shoot up and slap what I thought was someone breaking in. My brother falls onto the carpet, holding his face. I scream at him and ask him why he did that, and he replied, “I wanted to cuddle.”

I’m not a person who is very physical with my family, and this made me very uncomfortable for the week I was with my mom and stepfather. The next morning when they got home, I told them what happened. My stepdad asked if I was ok, but my mom shrugged it off and said, “he’s just a kid, leave him be. Now go apologize for slapping for baby brother!”

I was distant with my mother before this, and now her and I barely talk. My stepdad tried to teach my brother not to do that, but he has a tendency to lecture and everyone zones out when he’s talking, so I’m planning on going no-contact with my mom and brother one I finish highschool and college. I know my brother will one day get suspended or expelled from school, and he might get arrested in the long run if he still never learns that isn’t right.