Dad shuts down neighbor's offer to use baby monitor to babysit from their house. AITA?
Keeping your kids safe requires non-stop childcare. Even when they're sleeping, even in safe neighborhoods - small children need someone there who can protect them from the potential for accidents and injuries. For parents who aren't swimming in money or support, this can be tiresome and make it very hard to get nights out or breaks. But that doesn't make it okay to neglect a small child.
In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a dad asked if he was wrong for refusing to let the neighbors watch the kids via baby monitor. He wrote:
"AITA for not allowing a baby monitor to be a substitute for a babysitter?"
My wife and I have small children (under 5 years old). So does the couple next door. The way our street is set up, our "front" doors face each other (they're on the sides of our houses), and are only separated by about 15-20 feet. You can easily see inside one house from the other if the doors are open.
The couple next door and my wife had a discussion when I wasn't around, and all agreed that if one of the couples decided to go out, we could just give the baby monitor to the other couple to "watch" the kids.
In fairness to them, they only said they'd do this while the kids were asleep (so they're not leaving kids unsupervised and awake), and the signal for the baby monitor DOES reach from one house to the next. When I heard the idea, I immediately said no. What if there's a fire or some other emergency?
What if the monitor's signal gets disconnected and we don't realize it? What if the kids wake up to find an empty house? My wife begrudgingly told the other couple the deal was off, and they've been cold to me ever since. So reddit, AITA?
People didn't hold back their thoughts one bit.
Outrageously_Penguin wrote:
NTA. That is an extremely terrible, dangerous idea.
Bigger-the-hair wrote:
Ask Madeleine McCann’s parents about how well this system works!
okIhaveANopinionHERE wrote:
I saw in the comments:
"Their idea is mainly for evenings when a couple might go out together."
This solidifies it for me as NTA. I have actually done this for neighbors, but it was for situations like they were mowing the lawn and wouldn't be able to hear the baby monitor (so can you get me if the baby wakes up), or needing to run a quick errand (they'll be back in 10 - 15 minutes). If this is going to be for several hours, it's not appropriate to leave the baby unattended.
Rredhead926 wrote:
NTA. Wow, that is possibly the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. How are the kids supposed to know their parents are gone? Because if you tell them they're gone, and no one is in the house, they're going to freak, but if you don't tell them the parents are gone, and they wake up and no one's there, they're going to freak. I can't believe any competent adult would believe this was OK.
MollyRolls wrote:
NTA. I assumed at first that this was about using a baby monitor for dinners at each other’s house, in which case I thought you might be a little overprotective, but the actual scenario proposed would be a hard no for me.
Being “watched” by neighbors (who have kids of their own to worry about) through a monitor just would not make me feel safe at all. Someone to trade babysitting with is a wonderful thing, so I hope you can mend fences, but for me it’d have to be one member of a couple staying in the other couple’s house for the evening.
OP is definitely NTA here, there are a lot of ways this could go wrong.