 Stepdaughter wants to babysit baby brother | |
Hi all, my stepdaughter who is 13 wants to babysit her brother who just turned a year old. I am not comfortable with this because she isn't responsible. I have been giving little opportunities to start demonstrating responsibilty. For example, I may go to my home office and work on a project while I let her watch him. But, she isn't happy with these "Test Runs". To be honest, I don't know if I will ever trust her.
She is unwilling to learn what it means to be responsbile for a life, for example the other day I was cooking dinner and I had raw chicken I had just thrown in the skillet. She came along and started messing with it and pushing it around with the spoon that was in a side vegetable and then placed the spoon back into the vegetables. I asked her what she was doing, she said she was bored. I asked her if she wanted to learn how to make dinner? She said no. I left it at that, but before she left I explained to her how I had to throw out the vegetables because she had stuck a spoon that she had used on raw chicken into them and we could get sick. This was only moments before she had told me she was ready to take care of the baby. I told her that little things like protecting food from contamination are the things she still needs to learn before she is ready to watch the baby.
Rather than taking in the knowledge she tried turning it into a fight. She said she would never do that with the baby because she would use baby food. I told her, she also needs to think about what she is eating and what would happen if she got sick from the food while no one is home? She said I was stupid for thinking something like that could happen and that I was even more stupid for wanting to pay someone else for watching the baby when we could have someone watch him for free or atleast a lot cheaper. I told her that this kind of arguing does not help convince us that she should be the one to watch the baby and I didn't want to discuss it any more that night. Naturally, she says I'm stupid.
The question I have for everyone here: Am I wrong in thinking she isn't ready? I'm sorry,if I'm being overly protective, but I don't want to put the life of my son in the hands of someone that thinks calling me stupid is a convincing way to prove responsibility.
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