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If your friend wants to help in an emergency situation such as new husband has a heart attack and her mother needs to go to the hospital immediately than I would say that she should help if she can.
However, if it is a regular type babysitting situation, such as parents going out to dinner or to a party, NO, NO, NO.
Did you notice that I said NO!
Now you friend may want to build a relationship with her half-siblings by occasional doing fun things with them or attending family celebrations. That is fine.
But, regular babysitting, absolutely not. Please print this out for your friend. She is being taken advantage of by her mother. The next time Mom calls, your friend should say "No". tell your friend that "No" is a complete sentence.
Also, tell your friend to remind her mother that often 11 and 12 year olds start to do paid babysitting themselves for other families. So, now or very soon her 11 year old should be old enough, and responsible enough, to care for himself as well as his siblings. I wonder what Mom will say to that?
(although, some 11 year olds are old enough to babysit some aren't mature enough).
BTW Our son was 4 years older than our daughter. On a rare occasion he would care for her for a few hours, sometimes we paid him or compensated him in some way and sometimes it was considered a "family responsibility". Often we would let him do his own thing and hire a babysitter just for our younger child. We would absolutely NEVER consider asking a 25 year old half-sibling to drive home to babysit. Your friend's mom is wrong, IMHO.
Last edited by germaine2626; 11-10-2013 at 09:07 PM..
In that situation, no. I see nothing wrong with asking, however the Mom should accept that the older daughter has a life and isn't always available.
If she were an older child still living at home, yes, she should be expected to do SOME babysitting, but certainly not all the time or have to cancel plans in order to stay home with younger siblings.
My oldest son babysat his siblings when he was old enough at 11 or 12. I would never expect him to do that when he was older and would never ask. Difference is though he loved his brother and sister and they weren't monsters, so they could hang out with him when he had his own place. I'd say her mother needs to plan on staying home and watching her own damn kids if they're impossible to find babysitters for. On the flip side, I watched my grandkids not because I wanted to but because my daughter expected it. I said if you can make the decision to have kids, then you need to make arrangements for a sitter. I am not it. I emphasized that point by moving to Florida from Colorado. You wanted kids, you take care of them.
Of course she is under no obligation to babysit. But she doesn't need to alienate her mother by bluntly telling her, "NO, I am not doing this!" All she needs to do is say, "I'm so sorry, I can't. I'm busy. I have other plans." Or some variation on the theme. Doesn't matter if those plans are sitting at home with a good book. Eventually, mom will realize that adult daughter is NEVER available for babysitting, and she will stop asking.
If all the horrible stuff you say about the mother and children is true then no, of course not. I can't help but think you are blowing things up and out a bit though. An older mom, trapping a rich husband by having demon children, using the poor helpless 1/2 sister, and you need advice on how to save her because she is to beaten down to say no, does sound horrible, but, it also sounds a bit fabricated.
Are you sure the mom and older daughter don't have a closer relationship than you think? Maybe she tells her mom she doesn't mind, or she likes watching them. I don't know, sounds a bit over the top. But if it's the absolute truth, then of course the obvious answer is "tell your friend to say she's busy" although I'm sure you've come up with that one on your own. All you can do is give her the advice of a friend, which I'm sure you already have. Sounds like a lot of complaining and judgement to me though. I have a feeling there is more to this story than your side.
Emergencies, certainly. But otherwise, her mother and her step-father can just pony up for a babysitter like the rest of the world. As an adult woman with responsibilities of her own (even if the responsibilities are to herself for resting and relaxing!), she is under no obligation to be at her mother's beck and call for child-care. And no, it's not a question of "does she 'owe' them babysitting. It's a family thing -- where and when do you draw the line between your own life and your family? She may find that it's easier to move away from town to break the cycle of expectations.
There's 13 years between me and my brother. Everyone was saying, "Oh, you have a built-in babysitter! How nice!" which was the exact WRONG thing to say to someone who, after 13 blissful years as an only child, suddenly was no longer an "only." :-)
However, my parents were extremely considerate: They always asked me ahead of time if I had plans for a particular evening or time, and if I did, then they hired an older woman, the mother of one of their friends who enjoyed the extra money, to babysit. It was never, "No, you can't go out with your friends, you have to babysit your little brother while we go out with OUR friends."
This is an interesting topic to me because we have two sets of kids almost 19 years apart. Our son was 21 and our daughter was 18.5 when we adopted two new babies. That first summer home with the first baby was the summer between DD's high school senior year and freshman year in college. I depended on her for a great deal of help and she was more than willing. I never left the baby alone with her so technically NO she did not baby sit but she did help a lot. Son was away so it wasn't an issue but when he did come home he fed and diapered a lot as well.
During her freshman year I came home with the second baby but she wasn't around as much to help. she did come home as much as possible and the next summer helped out too. We were paying for her college but there was never any tit for tat. She genuinely wanted to be with and care for her younger sisters.
During the toddler years son played a lot with them and took them outside to play and fed and changed but i don't recall ever leaving him in charge while we left the house.
This mother may thinking babysitting is the only way she can foster any relationship among all the kids. But if so she is going about it the wrong way. If she wants her oldest daughter to be close to the younger siblings forcing her to babysit is not the way. But this young woman needs to learn how to limit her sitting if she feels she is being taken advantage of.
BTW now that the babies are 11 and oldest DD is 30 they are all extremely close and love spending time together. I think it is a healthy relationship which began when they were very very young.
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