Photo: Tiktok
Did she overeact?
By Jonathan Alfano — Written on Jun 23, 2022
A mother on Tiktok sparked a debate when she posted a video about her babysitter falling asleep.
Danielle Mitchell, who has over 7,000 followers on the platform, posted the video on June 12 to voice her complaints about the incident. The video has since amassed over 1.6 million views and 180,000 likes.
Mitchell says that her babysitter fell asleep while watching her 10-month-old child.
She says in the video that it was her first time hiring someone outside of her family to watch her child. She adds that she and her husband normally wait to go out on date nights until their son is fully asleep, but she opted to hire a babysitter on this occasion after both parents failed to put him to sleep.
Mitchell then says that they were only gone from 6:30 to 9:30 that night. Around 9 p.m., she checked the cameras around the house and noticed that the sitter wasn’t moving from her spot on the couch.
She then texted the sitter to ask her to bring the dog inside since it had gotten dark outdoors, but she still didn’t move from the couch. Mitchell began to worry after seeing her still in the same spot.
“And then, like, internally, I’m kind of starting to freak out,” Mitchell said.
“Like, she’s watching our son, but she’s asleep, but he’s also asleep. But he’s only 10 months, and I don’t know if she would hear him if he woke up and started crying.”
Mitchell then decided to head straight home prematurely, and it took the sitter longer than expected to answer the door.
She wondered if the sitter could have left the sound monitor on to alert her in case something happened while she was asleep, but Mitchell soon learned that it was turned off as well.
She then asks whether or not she was overreacting to the situation as a first-time parent.
“Is it normal for your babysitter to fall asleep while they’re watching your kids if you’re back by 9:30?” Mitchell said. “It wasn’t like we were back at 2 a.m., we were back by 9:30. Let me know.”
Commenters were split on the issue. One asked if the sitter knew that there were cameras in the house, to which Mitchell posted a follow-up video showing the cameras in clear sight.
Most commenters believed that Mitchell was overreacting to the situation and that it was completely fine for the sitter to fall asleep while the child is also asleep. However, many agreed that she should have left the sound monitor active.
“If the kid(s) are asleep, it is normal for the babysitter to fall asleep,” one commenter said. “However, the monitor should have been on and turned all the way up.”
Others said that they disapproved of the babysitter falling asleep while on the job given the possibility of something happening to the child during that time.
“Used to babysit a lot as a teenager,” another commenter said. “I would NEVER sleep at someone’s house while on the job. And that’s even when the kids are older.”
Jonathan Alfano is a writer who focuses on news and entertainment topics. Follow him on Twitter to keep up with his content.