My Question of the Day: You decide it’s time to sit down with your 13-year-old son and talk about the “birds and the bees.” You have a very good relationship with him, and he feels comfortable telling you everything. When you begin the subject, he stops you and tells you that he already knows all he needs to know. You ask him how. He tells you that he asked his regular babysitter (a 19-year-old female who has watched him since he was a toddler) to show him what girls like and she did. What do you do?

My 2 Cents: My first priority is to keep my cool and listen to everything my son has to say, and then explain to him how totally inappropriate his interactions with the babysitter were. My next move is to call my babysitter and ask her to meet with me immediately. After I finish giving the babysitter most of the pieces of my mind, I’ll let her know her services are no longer needed.

I can’t honestly say that I’d get the authorities involved, but I would definitely call any of my friends who were also using this young lady as a babysitter and let them know of my situation.

I also agree with @rahsheen; if I’ve waited until my son is 13-years-old to talk to him about the “birds and the bees,” I’ve brought some of this heartache and stress on myself. In our highly-sexualized society, I should have been talking with my son about sex and sexuality as soon as he could speak in complete sentences.

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Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:

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John_Hinds I’d tell him ‘I’m proud of you son! Mackin on them older women. lol

JoshDamage I wud certainly be furious and fire her but I’m not sure I’d press charges against her.

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

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The Question: A good friend (not necessarily a close friend, but a good friend), who is a single parent, asks you if you will babysit his/her child(ren) on an upcoming Saturday because s/he is going to have to work overtime because of a big project his/her company has to complete before the end of the month. Your good friend wants to drop the child(ren) off on Friday night, because s/he says s/he’s going to be leaving for the office in the wee hours of the morning to start the project.

After a couple of days, when you’ve had time to make sure you’ll be free, you tell your good friend that you will babysit, and it will be fine to drop the child(ren) off on Friday evening after 7p.

About four days before the Friday evening that your good friend is supposed to bring his/her child(ren) to your home, you find out from a very, very credible source that your good friend isn’t working overtime at his/her job. S/he has planned a one-day trip to the biggest sporting event of the season for your favorite sport; an event you decided to forego (and that is now solded out) to help out your good friend.

What do you do?

My 2 Cents: I’d ask my friend to come by my house and then ask him/her point-blank, if s/he’s planning to go to the sporting event. I want to ask him/her face-to-face, because I’m definitely planning to verifiy his/her answer, and I’m not posing the option of whether s/he has to work. When you give a person a choice, they are more apt to compound their lie. I’d confront him/her on the issue that’s most important to me: Did you make plans to go to a sporting event on the day you’re asking me to watch your child(ren)?

If s/he says she really has to work, I’d ask for the name and telephone number of his/her superviser, so we could get him/her on speakerphone and verify that. If s/he admits that s/he lied and is planning to go to the sporting event, I’d decline to watch his/her child(ren), and I’d make it clear that I’m not the person to ask to babysit in the future.

That’s not to say I’d never babysit his/her children in the future. It’s just that s/he can’t ask me to babysit. I’ll volunteer my services when I know I’m free, and I know s/he has work/plans, but I won’t give him/her the opportunity to lie to me again. It saves us both hard feelings.

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Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:

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MusingMom  I would let the “good friend” know that I know that she is not working and tell her that she will have to find another sitter

Mo_Rease  I’d watch the kids but the parent would have to pay up.

QTKrisAriel  We wouldn’t be friends anymore.

JoshDamage  I simply ask my friend. If they did in fact lie I wudnt babysit. But that’s just me. I HATE a liar

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

My Question of the Day: A good friend (not necessarily a close friend, but a good friend), who is a single parent, asks you if you will babysit his/her child(ren) on an upcoming Saturday because s/he is going to have to work overtime because of a big project his/her company has to complete before the end of the month. Your good friend wants to drop the child(ren) off on Friday night, because s/he says s/he’s going to be leaving for the office in the wee hours of the morning to start the project.

After a couple of days, when you’ve had time to make sure you’ll be free, you tell your good friend that you will babysit, and it will be fine to drop the child(ren) off on Friday evening after 7p.

About four days before the Friday evening that your good friend is supposed to bring his/her child(ren) to your home, you find out from a very, very credible source that your good friend isn’t working overtime at his/her job. S/he has planned a one-day trip to the biggest sporting event of the season for your favorite sport; an event you decided to forego (and that is now solded out) to help out your good friend.

What do you do?

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

FYI: You may edit your comment for up to 30 minutes after posting. After 30 minutes, your comment can no longer be revised.