Reply to AITA: Getting crap for not attending a Friday wedding because we have no childcare

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Reply to "AITA: Getting crap for not attending a Friday wedding because we have no childcare"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I really do not see why BIL is even coming. Hmmm fly alone with 2 small children to attend a cousin’s kid free wedding in the middle of nowhere, and no childcare options….sure, sign me right up? And all this for a cousin who planned a wedding at 3pm on a Friday? I mean…just no. I don’t understand why MIL/FIL seem to encouraging such a thing either.

The logical thing would be for BIL to stay HOME, op’s DH attends alone.

If BIL is determined to continue with this absurd plan, that is on him. Not your problem. My guess is he figured “wife is out of town, I’ll take the kids to visit family, who will do all the childcare for me so I can relax”. Pretty common.

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Ha, totally 100% I bet that was what BIL was thinking. “Hey this will be easy.” [/quote]

The BIL doesn’t strike me as this kind of guy.  I know that these men exist.  In fact, I am married to one.  But this type of guy would just tell his wife that he’s going to the wedding and leave her to figure out childcare during the marathon.

The BIL seems like a guy who is used to taking care of his kids.

[/quote]

…by expecting his SIL to watch them.[/quote]

No.  He suggested that they get an Airbnb near the venue and split the cost of a sitter.

It was MIL who expected OP to stay home and watch all of the kids.  [/quote]

BIL thinking it’s easy to just find and trust a sitter in some random location shows that he’s clueless about childcare. [/quote]

Seekingsitters.com

You’re welcome[/quote]

Weird how all these drama llama mommas keep ignoring this every time it’s posted, instead continuing to shriek about “Care.com internet randos!!!”[/quote]

It’s different than care.com

I can assure you that seekingsitters does a better job vetting sitters than most daycares, and definitely a better job than your neighbor or whoever you feel is so trustworthy.  [/quote]
This is starting to be like the realtors posting in the Real Estate threads. Enough already. I’m not getting one-off child care for my kids from an internet rando. [/quote]

Ha!  I know it sounds like that.   
It’s just been really helpful for me in the past, both at home and when traveling. 
I get your anxiety, but most of us have to trust someone else with the care of our children sometimes.   [/quote]
Trusting someone else to care for my kids does not equal trusting someone off the internet to care for my kids, I don’t care what site it is. [/quote]

How do you find your caregivers?  I have used nanny agencies that I found online, and they have found applicants online.  I have user daycare that I found their caregivers through internet applications.  
Are you picking up caregivers in bars or something?  [/quote]

DP, who would also never use care.com (or any Internet site like it) to find childcare - we found babysitters from a few places: woman who staffed the childcare room at our gym, neighbors, older kids on our children's summer swim team, staff at the kids' daycare, once we'd left.  These were all people with whom we'd interacted in real-life before we let them watch our kids, alone, in our home.  When we were selecting daycare, we vetted them thoroughly but not exhaustively.

It's the kids alone with someone they don't know that we don't do.  We're not martyrs or anxiety-prone, but there are certain risks we aren't willing to take. [/quote]

How is the risk with, say, a nurse who lives near you and is looking for some extra cash lower than the risk of a teen from your kids swim team?  
How does your knowing someone make them a better or more responsible caregiver?  [/quote]

Really?  I can't believe I have to spell this out to a parent, but here goes: when you have had multiple interactions with a person, you usually get to know them better.  When you see them interacting with multiple people, you can observe those interactions.  It's not that knowing someone makes *them* better or more responsible, it's that knowing someone usually improves *my* judgment in whether they're responsible.  Most people willing to watch kids aren't sadistic or neglectful.  But plenty of people do dumb stuff, or are careless, or don't take responsibilities seriously.

A parent having reasonable precautions in who watches their children, alone, in their house is really NBD.  That you and others are dumping on the OP about it says more about you than it does them.  You'd really leave your child(ren) with someone you don't know at all?  [/quote]

You need to be careful trusting "your instincts" here.  It is a well documented fact that the vast majority of child abuse and sexual abuse issues are perpetrated by someone that the child knows well and sees more frequently, usually family or family friends.  The number of cases of people hired from childcare sites that provide background checks and previous customer references is much smaller and much less likely.  The "internet randos" that are abusers tend to get found on social media sites, not on vetted childcare sites for hire.

So statistics and probability say that going with a company that does background checks and provides customer references is far more likely to be safe than hiring the high school kid from your neighborhood or the cousin of the mother of your older sibling's high school teammate.[/quote]

I never mentioned my "instincts," so you can toss that out the window.  I've actually worked with sex offenders in a professional capacity, so I know far more than most what the highest risks are.  That doesn't make me infallible, but it does make me pay attention to all the data I can collect - both from objective (if imperfect) measures like background checks and from subjective things like references, my interactions, and observations of this person.  Abusers are more likely to be known to the child, absolutely true - that doesn't rule out childcare providers.  I actually deliberately did NOT let a counselor at my kids' camp watch my kids alone because he was weirdly pushy about it ("I'd love to babysit your kids, here's my number, now you need to text me").

There's also a difference in risk depending on the number of eyes on a kid.  Abusers typically isolate their kids which is, by definition, easier when they're *alone* with your children, in your house, than in a larger childcare setting.  That doesn't mean it never happens in the latter environment, but come on.  The PP claiming that a background check and CPR training suffice for leaving children alone with an adult is misinformed, at best.

For people who are interested, "Protecting the Gift" by Gavin de Becker is a great read on keeping kids safe.  He has a particular chapter on selecting childcare, including specific questions to ask of care providers.  It's been helpful for us in selecting childcare in the past.[/quote]

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