‘I’d take this to civil court’: Babysitter loses $1,000 to a kid’s chaos, but his parents can only offer a ‘sorry’

Babysitting horror stories are nothing new, but this one came with a $1,000 price tag. A sitter looking after two siblings says one of the kids’ reckless antics left her with a loss equal to nearly half her monthly salary. How did the parents respond? With a half-baked apology text.

A student working for a family to babysit their 7-year-old boy and 5-year-old girl took to Reddit to share an infuriating experience that has left a hole in her pocket. The children’s mother had suggested she bring along her own homework to do with the boy, hoping it might motivate him to tackle his assignments too. Since her coursework was all online, the sitter naturally brought her laptop. What started as a harmless idea quickly spiraled into a nightmare.

“The boy was curious about my homework, so I showed him what I can do with it. I was showing the keyboard lights up and what paper I was writing when he asked ‘Hey, what would happen if I put water on it?'”

Now, kids say bizarre things all the time, but the babysitter’s stomach dropped—this wasn’t a child who knew boundaries. “He’s the kind of kid who has never heard the word ‘no,'” she wrote. Alarmed, she tried to shut it down gently: “You might break it because water can damage electronics.” To drive the point home, she even threatened, half-jokingly, that she’d pour water on his Nintendo Switch if he tried anything.

She later defended that tactic, explaining that the boy’s father had told her it was fine to make “empty threats” if it might scare him into behaving. But to be on the safer side, the OP put her laptop in her backpack, but then shifted it to a super high shelf when she saw the boy trying to rip open her bag. But this did not stop the boy either. “He spent the next hour pulling up his high chair to the shelf, me dragging the chair away, him pulling it back, etc.,” she shared.

But the real disaster struck when the babysitter had to step away to help the little girl use the restroom. “The boy took the opportunity to pull my laptop down and slam it onto the ground, shattering the screen. Then he poured water on it,” she wrote. When the girl came back, she immediately freaked out and informed the parents. While the dad was very apologetic, the mom just sent her a text saying, “I’ll speak to him and hopefully he’ll listen this time.”

Calling the boy’s tantrums routine, the babysitter felt the parents should replace the laptop and turned to Reddit for advice. “The dad was bragging that the mom is a lawyer who bills $1,500 an hour and brings in a couple of thousand dollars a day. This is a $1,000 gaming laptop I worked hard for—would it be unreasonable to ask them to replace it?” she asked.

Redditors immediately sided with her. “They should absolutely replace it. If their little demons are that destructive, maybe it’s not worth babysitting them anymore,” one wrote. Another added, “This wasn’t an accident. I’d be getting a new laptop, and if they refused, I’d take them to civil court.”

In the end, it’s a stark reminder: when parents shrug off destructive behavior, it’s the babysitter who pays the price, sometimes literally.