Brilliant Things That Happen When You’re Babysitting

When I was around 10 or 11, one of my favourite movies was Adventures In Babysitting. We had it on VHS and, along with fellow 80s classics Hello Again and Baby Boom, I watched it over and over. Back then, babysitting seemed such a grown up thing to do (pretty sure that’s because Elisabeth Shue was actually 25, playing a teenager in the movie… also love that her best friend Brenda was channelling some serious Barb from Stranger Things vibes…)

Since becoming a mum, I’ve babysat for friends a handful of times, and despite the fact it’s nothing like in the movie, here’s why I love it…

1. You get to sit in someone else’s house and just for a couple of hours, pretend you live there. You can make yourself a cuppa, watch TV, and almost try out that life just temporarily. It’s a bit like when you were a kid and you moved your bedroom furniture around, and you’d wake up the next morning and just for a minute, it would feel like someone else’s bedroom.
2. The people you’re babysitting for probably have a better digital TV package than you. You know what that means: Sky Movies, or even better, Comedy Central, so you can watch back-to-back episodes of Friends (Which is your favourite episode? Mine is The One Where No-One’s Ready)
3. When you make yourself a cup of tea, you get to have a totally legitimate and non-nosey look in their fridge. Anyone else find looking in someone else’s fridge SO FASCINATING? I often see things that it wouldn’t occur to me to buy (ooh beetroot! I forgot I like beetroot) and feel relieved that other people’s fridges are packed slightly chaotically like mine is. (NB. If you’re reading this and I’ve babysat for you, obviously I don’t mean your fridge. I didn’t look in your fridge.)

But of course, there’s also this…

1. You can’t really have a drink – getting slowly sloshed on your own sofa while kid(s) sleep upstairs is acceptable. Doing it on someone else’s sofa, while you’re responsible for their kid(s), not so much.
2. You have to work out how their TV / fancy kettle works. And what’s their wifi password again?
3. When their kids won’t go to sleep and keep getting up and interrupting your precious TV/cuppa time…

Ultimately though, the best thing about babysitting is that it probably means they’ll repay the favour and babysit for you one day soon… DATE NIGHT ALERT.