Redditor Faces Babysitting Ban After Drugging Non-Verbal Niece To Induce Sleep, Ignoring Guardians' Explicit Instructions To Report Any Problem

This is one babysitting nightmare that everyone would wish to forget soon.

Jesse

• Published in Interesting
• April 2, 2024

Our narrator’s (Original Poster’s) daughter tied the knot four months ago. However, a few weeks before the wedding bells chimed, something quite significant happened.

Her husband’s cousins, aged 11 and 7, were plucked from their parent’s custody and placed in the care of OP’s daughter and son-in-law. Why? Well, that remained a mystery till this day.

All OP knew was something was off about those girls. For one thing, they looked a lot smaller than their ages—the 11-year-old could pass as seven! Another thing was they seemed painfully shy and antisocial. 

When the newlyweds embarked on their honeymoon, OP was tasked with babysitting the girls; the preparations involved were astonishing. OP watched in awe as they meticulously turned the spare bedroom into an exact replica of the girls’ actual room.

They also set up a spread of snacks, drinks, and meal replacement shakes, then urged OP to call immediately if anything went wrong. The 7-year-old took a few days to settle in, but her sister? No such luck. 

She survived on meal replacement shakes, never spoke, never left her room, and stayed up till OP put her to sleep using Benadryl. This continued all week till OP’s daughter came to pick them up. 

Barely a day went by before she called OP, thundering down the phone. She’d found out the 11-year-old struggled to cope and was furious with OP for not reporting this. 

OP tried to explain they didn’t want to ruin their honeymoon, but to her, such behavior was simply unacceptable. As of now, OP was completely banned from babysitting the girls or even being around them unsupervised. 

They honestly couldn’t see what they did wrong. Was OP really the bad guy here?

The story in detail

A bit of background

While OP’s daughter and son-in-law were preparing to go for their honeymoon, they left the girls in their care. In addition, OP was instructed to place a call immediately if they noticed anything wrong

OP noticed that the older girl was finding it difficult to sleep. However, OP put her to sleep with drugs and lied to their daughter on call that everything was ok

OP’s daughter eventually found out what was going on and banned them from babysitting the kids in the future

Let’s take a look at what the Reddit community had to say:

“You dru**ed an 11-year-old traumatized girl because you couldn't deal with her problems.”

“There was a reason she told you to call her if they were having problems. Instead, you opted to dr*g a child to sleep.”

“YTB and what you did exceeds bu**face and falls directly into child endangerment.”

“If she’s having issues sleeping it’s due to stress and anxiety, you should of called the mother.”

“YTBF for not informing your daughter. Drugging the 11 yr old? Definitely tbf.”

“From your post, it comes across as if the girls were a major inconvenience for you.”

It was obvious OP had no inkling of how badly they messed up, so Redditors took it upon themselves to give them a ruthless reality check.

They strongly condemned their act of administering medication to the child without proper consultation or even addressing their concerns with her guardians. By lying, OP broke his daughter’s trust, so her reaction was understandable.

The consensus was clear, OP was the butt face here.

Do you agree with the commenters? Share your thoughts with us.

Jesse