It can be hard trusting a new babysitter with your infant–no matter how caring and experienced the sitter is. Well, one dad basically wrote an instructional textbook on what a babysitter should do. When Bryan Elliott, who is a software engineer and dad from the Philadelphia area, hired his first babysitter, she requested instructions.
Well, she didn’t know what she was getting into. Elliott hired a babysitter to take care of son Jack when he was a baby, and emailed instructions–while Jack is nearly 4 years old. His wife, Amy Jackson, rediscovered the old email when she was going through her archives.
Because of this, they decided to post it in the Parenting subreddit, where it went viral–because they hoped it would give new parents “a laugh and a little peace of mind—particularly for soon-to-be parents.”
The instructions are hilariously brilliant, which range from how to use a pacifier (“Shove it in his mouth. Nothing to it.”) to what to do if the baby poops through his diaper (“If it’s trivial, carefully remove his outfit. If it’s a goddamned war zone, carefully cut his outfit off, using blunt-nose scissors.”).
Read the full post below:
My wife forwarded me an old email I’d sent to my son’s first babysitter. from Parenting
So, why did Elliott write the lengthy email that way? He stated:
“I remembered how lost Amy and I were when we brought Jack home on the first day, and figured I should write something detailed and straightforward without being too boring to read. Just the idea of looking at an infant as a device—sort of a squishy Tamagotchi—is absurd enough to be funny. And I write a lot of technical documentation for work, so that’s the direction I kind of fell into.”
He also mentioned that he felt like many parenting books just aren’t helpful, and believes humor is a better approach to giving new parents advice, saying:
“Amy and I were terrified for much of the nine months prior to Jack’s arrival. I hope that, by giving soon-to-be’s something this concrete and a little funny, they’ll gain a little more confidence in their ability to deal with the unending nightmare of child-care.”
Well, I can definitely say I got a kick out of reading his directions–definitely worth a read.
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