The babysitting jealousy problem between families

The anguish of trying to babysit between five families. Jenny had 10 grandchildren and five daughters, and because she did not work, she was regularly asked to mind children. Her first daughter asked her to mind at her place after school and one afternoon quickly grew into three and four afternoons a week. The second daughter liked Jenny to come in early morning so she could go shopping or to university, without the children, and this would happen a number of mornings a week.

Both of these daughters lived on opposite sides of Brisbane and the third daughter lived a few streets away. This third daughter would ask for nighttime minding so she could go out to restaurants with her friends. Jenny found she was running herself ragged trying to keep up with all the different requests, times and places, not to mention being exhausted from minding young children. Nobody ever visited her at her home to see how she was doing!

Jenny’s fourth daughter was becoming a little out of sorts because Jenny was not finding enough time to mind her children. This daughter had actually been adding up the hours that Jenny was spending with the others and becoming quite jealous. Jenny had explained to her that she would try and be equal about her time, but this became very difficult with so many grandkids, and so much driving. There was obviously a rift starting to appear in their relationship. The fifth daughter was only asking occasionally and seemed a bit distant.

Petrol costs were becoming larger as she drove from house to house and Jenny did not like to mention these costs to the daughters, as she did not want to appear as though she could not afford it.  She continued to drive from house to house trying to please her family.

Then along came Christmas Dinner. At Christmas Dinner when you have everyone together often the comments start coming out when people are not happy with something.  By the time the dinner was getting started, Jenny found babysitting had become the topic of conversation. They were actually all arguing over baby-sitting hours and her time. One daughter commented that the other had had 30 hours babysitting in the last three weeks, where the other daughter commented she had only had seven hours. One daughter complained she had not had a chance to get babysitting cause Jenny was so busy. Jenny was actually amazed how much a record the different daughters were keeping of her babysitting hours at each place.

Something had to be done about the problem, so she sat them all down and told them she was no longer going to do regular babysitting.  Jenny wanted to enjoy all her grandchildren, but needed to stop the conflict in the family. She decided to stay at home and get on with her life.  All the time she I had spent worrying about keeping the peace and keeping the babysitting equal, nobody had been visiting her for herself to see how she was… They were too busy.

With these new rules my mind Jenny offered to babysit anytime if they brought the kids over to her house. She was no longer going to spend her life at everyone else’s convenience. They had to make the effort to come and see her. They had to take the time to care rather than use her for her services.

She was surprised when the first daughter turned up at her home and brought the kids over for afternoon tea. It was a lovely occasion with no pressure.  Slowly they all fitted in times to bring the grandchildren for regular visits. In fact, more time was spent enjoying each others time as a family and the daughters all often ended up coming over together so the kids could play. Life actually became a lot easier after the changes, and the family was no longer arguing.

Do you babysit for your family? How do you manage your time between families?