u/Fast_Divide5850

Hi everyone,

For context, I'm a 17 yr old babysitter in a nice area in California. I'm fortunate that when I'm babysitting, I often take the kids out for fun days around town, go swimming with them, and I've even traveled with a few of my babysitting families. Recently, another friend who babysits found out that I have photos of some of the kids I've watched on my phone, and she was genuinely shocked. It made me wonder what the general consensus is.

To me, it feels pretty natural to take pictures during experiences that are a big part of my everyday life. At the same time, I fully understand that these aren't my kids, and I don't exactly have permission from their parents to take photos of them. It's just never really come up, although some parents have actually asked me to send them pictures of what we did that day.

To be clear:

1. I would never post a child's face on a public social media account
2. If I take a photo, it's just a quick pic - it doesn't distract me from supervising the kids.
3. If I notice a photo is accidentally inappropriate (for example, a swimsuit shifting etc), I delete it immediately
4. I've occasionally shown a picture to a friend sitting next to me because she thought the kids were cute, but I've never texted or otherwise shared those photos with anyone
5. I'm making it sound like I take photos a lot but in reality I have maybe 1-2 photos for every 5 times I've babysat

I will admit that on a few occasions I've posted photos to my private close friends Instagram account (about 30 followers, all friends I'm close with). In those photos, the kids faces weren't shown, and the story was really about the activity or scenery rather than the child. Even so, I'm wondering if that still crosses a line.

I guess I'm just trying to figure out what the appropriate boundaries are. Babysitting is a huge part of my life (I've clocked around 700 hours over the last four years), so it feels natural to want to document some of those experiences. At the same time, I want to respect the families' privacy and make sure I'm handling things appropriately.

I'd love to hear what parents think, and what experienced babysitters or nannies are doing! Thank you :)

I babysit for a family with two little girls, ages 8 months and 6 years. I've been with their oldest since she was 3, and I absolutely love working for them. When the baby sister was a few months old and started crawling, the older one would sometimes "copy" her by scooting around next to her. I thought it was adorable and completely harmless. Since then, though, she's started copying her sister in ways that are a lot more difficult to manage. For example, after bath time I lay out her pajamas for her to put on (she's been dressing herself since she was 3!), and while I get her baby sister dressed, she'll lie down waiting for me to dress her too. I tell her, "I'm here if you need help, but you're a big girl and I know you know how to get dressed." She'll refuse and say, "I'm a baby. I don't know how." At first, I would just wait it out. I'd stay in the room with both girls until she decided to get dressed, and that seemed to work. But the last time I babysat, she simply wouldn't get dressed. I talked to her parents, and they said not to give it too much attention and to just continue the evening as normal because she'll eventually get dressed. But honestly, a lot of the things we do together are piggybacks / handstands / dances and I would just prefer her be dressed in general, at least with underwear.

I give her a lot of one on one attention, so I don't think it's an attention issue. Her baby sister is super chill and is usually happy sitting next to us or in her bouncer (if anything, I sometimes worry I'm not interacting with the baby enough!). The oldest has always been perfectly behaved, she's pretty smart too, she reads the bedtime stories instead of me haha so this is just really out of character for her. I'm 17 and have been babysitting regularly for the past 6 years for multiple families with young kids, and I've never run into anything like this before. Has anyone experienced something similar? Any tips on how to handle it?