ExH allowed 13 year old to babysit Step Siblings

A tenner isn't enough, but that's a whole other subject

I wouldn't leave my 14 and 11 year old alone at night for that long - 2 or 3 hours sure, but past midnight? No. Let alone with toddlers, and I'd generally consider myself fairly lax (and I was babysitting for people that young)

And yes, why would he leave her and take his wife out, rather than taking her out given how little he sees her. I don't understand that at all.

My under 10’s were left to babysit 3 and 1 year old half siblings…..

My 2yo wakes up too. I don't see why a teenager wouldn't be able to cope.
If you don't want to, fine, but there's not actually anything wrong with it.

Does he understand the purpose of contact time? He is supposed to be spending it with his daughter, not treating her as the hired help.

A 13yo is too young to be in sole charge of little ones for anything longer than an hour I think. The fact that lots of you on this commenting this thread did so at that age still doesnt make it ok imho.

If you think its ok would you/do you leave your 2yo and 5yo alone for an entire evening with a 13yo? I suspect not.
Plus of course in this situation the dad should be spending time with his 13yo not using her as cheap childcare.

I think the babysitting is fine at 13 as long as she was able to contact them and they weren't far away. I do think he should have prioritised spending the evening with his DD over a date night with his wife though. They could have had a takeaway and movie night at home and included her.

Did she want to do it or did she feel she had to as she was there & they wouldn't have been able to go out otherwise?

Would she have gone to see him if she had known he would be going out?

I was babysitting a boy with high needs autism at 14. I think it’s fine but he did underpay her.

I wouldn't have any issue with a sensible 13yo babysitting for an evening; I also don't think it's unusual for sibling babysitters to be paid a token amount, given that they would be in the house anyway. I do think it's a bit shit of him to spend so much of his (already very minimal) contact time away from his daughter.

No problem with the babysitting assuming she'd say no if she didn't want to and if the kids were easy to look after.

Another one wondering how well she knows them if the youngest is only 2?

When I lived in Alabama the local hospital ran 'safe sitter' classes for 11 year olds. It covered first aid and how to care for young children.

It was made clear in the class that the 11 year olds were not to look after babies, but a 2 year old and a 5 year old would have been fine.

I think a sensible 13 year old can babysit a 2 year old and 5 year old provided they know what to do in an emergency. They should be paid £10 an hour and an additional charge for looking after a second child.

Her step siblings are only 2 and 5? How long has she even known them? How long has her father and his wife been together?

Ten quid? I was getting that for an evening's babysitting 40 odd years ago, I was probably 14 or 15. 😡

And yes, he should have spent time with her instead of lumping her with his younger kids.

I don’t think 13 is too young to babysit older children (5/6 plus) but I am astonished that a 2 year old child was left in the care of a minor, that is far too young to not have a responsible adult around.

I don't think she's too young to babysit, especially if her dad had his phone and wasn't far away. I do think he is a complete AH for not wanting to spend the evening with his daughter who it doesn't sound like he sees much of.

OPs child's is the 13 year old isn't she? Or have I misread?

I think as an occasional thing it's fine, provided DD is OK with it. Is the 2 year old still up? It's entirely possible one, if not both, smaller dc are already in bed.

If your DD was unhappy about it then I’d help her talk to her dad or offer to talk to him on her behalf (or offer to come pick her up early if they want to go out so they can hire another sitter and she can spend the night at home). But the reality is that you don’t have much control or right to make demands of how he handles this during his contact time, so it’s probably not productive to try to do so.

I babysat at 13, as did the generation before me when parents didn’t have cell phones. She was in a familiar home and if the parents left at 7:30 the little kids would likely have been in bed or close to it. If the 13 year old feels confident about what to do in an emergency, has a reliable phone, and the parents can be contacted then it’s not wildly unacceptable from a safety perspective. Your DD might well have felt more comfortable with this set up than having a babysitter she doesn’t know come over and sit up with her while the little kids are asleep.

Ideally your DH and his partner would schedule date nights for when your DD isn’t there given how little contact time he has. But then if he was a top-tier, super engaged father she would have far more contact time with him in the first place, so his choice here isn’t surprising. And if they left at 7:30 that’s likely only a few waking hours he might have spent with her instead.

$10 is way too low obviously and I would probably tell your DD that.

My 2 year old wakes up at least once in the night crying for me, she's a completely different beast in the night than during the day and leaving a 13 year old with that responsibility is mad imo

The 2 year old needs to be in the care of an adult!
Please tell me you will never let this happen again.

This really bothered me. This woman has married a man she's known for a very short space of time and has a near stranger looking after her children

In general I think 13 is ok but not for a 2 year old, they might not be able to communicate efficiently and there are still way too many dangerous things around that a 2 year old could get into, also choking hazards etc - it's just not worth the risk in my opinion

I wouldn't let a 13 year old drive my car around the block let alone take care of my 2 and 5 year old children. You are not being unreasonable.

You do not hand over your kids for them to be looked after by a child. It’s completely inappropriate and not something I would ever agree to. It would be dad or no one.

The babysitting is fine.

The pay and it being his weekend is absolutely not!

the scenarios of sitting quietly whilst young children are sleeping soundly are great, but the point of having an older more experienced person there is that accidents can happen. Children can get out of bed. And if you are not used to looking after two year olds, they can be a lot more difficult to handle.
My parents and relatives left all of us with only my 13 year old sister in charge. Running about with cousins, 7 year old me tripped and I put my hand through a glass pane. Looking back, we were so lucky that it wasn't more serious as my sister didn't know what to do and waited until everyone got home.