@lionheart
This reminds me of the time I offered to babysit a teacher's 5 year old child. The teacher must have been desperate to canvass her class of 16 year olds for a volunteer.
But as she was leaving the house I realised she hadn't mentioned a specific bedtimefor her daughter so I asked for some instruction:
'Oh Alexandra will tell you when she's ready for bed.'
Even as a 16 year old I knew that this would not end well.
Alexandra was never ready for bed and would not budge for love or money.
She was still awake at 11 when her mother returned (and was appalled to find the 5 year old awake).
What made it worse was that the teacher moaned about this state of play in to the whole class the next day:
'I'm a little disorganised becase Alexandra was so exhausted this morning. Lionheart babysat and let her stay up all night!'
I had the same thing happen. I was 20 and living abroad. I used to pick up 5yo b/g twins from school twice a week, give them a snack and teach them a bit of English. Basically I was fulfilling a nanny job with language skills. Single mum and her sister was paying me btw.
As a favour, she asked me if I could stay on foc to look after the children one evening. She’d be back at. 9. Bath then bed at 8. The boy played up, typical 5yo antics and I couldn’t get them to settle. So we sat in front of cartoons chatting thinking it wasn’t a major issue. They’d only be an hour late.
Just gone 9.30, she comes back and she’s with the bloke she’s obviously thinking about shagging. But she has a boyfriend and it’s not the same bloke. She screamed at me and threw me out of the house. Next day she invited me back, I thought to apologise and I naively went. Oh no. She ambushed me with her mate and tore strips off me for over an hour before throwing me out again and telling me not to come back. I imagine the nasty friend was taking over.
I have no idea how she expected me to put them to bed. It was impossible as they played off one another. I thought we were friends but this wasn’t the only favour I did for her. Looking back she was a nasty user and was obviously afraid the kids would blab about the guy she’d brought back. I wonder what he thought about her screaming at me. They were both colleagues btw so I had to suffer the indignity of seeing them regularly after that.