The Oldest Child Always Has to Watch the Others
“When my dad was in nursing school, he had a big group over for a finals studying session and one of his classmates couldn’t get a sitter. Well, at the time he had four kids and I was 14 and he asked if I could wrangle her kid and my siblings to keep them out of the way of everyone studying. The plan for the siblings was cartoon movies, some popcorn, dinner later. The plans for my father’s classmate’s kids was… I can watch them for free, no problem.
She showed up with FIVE kids. I now had eight under eight year olds to wrangle and I got yelled at every time one of her kids got near the study group. They were screaming, yelling, messy, hitting each other, biting my siblings demons. After four hours, I was sick of it, the kids were hungry and the adults asked ME what was for dinner.
After a while, it became obvious that dad and company weren’t studying- they were talking, laughing, and I could hear them making fun of me. So I gathered up the classmate’s kids, walked them over to the group, and said “well, since you’re done, I’m done watching your kids” and just went into my room and shut the door.
As the oldest kid, I was ALWAYS volunteered by my parents to babysit kids I didn’t even know the names of. It got old REAL fast.
Now if someone asks me to babysit because they heard that I have 18 brothers and sisters, I demand $50 up front and a written agreement that I get an extra $10 for every hour +$10 per kid. I haven’t babysat in ages.”
Story credit: Reddit / heyomeatballs