Thankfully, I have never had to pay anyone to watch my child.
I was reminded of how grateful I am of this fact after hearing about the teen babysitter from Ohio, who decided she was sick of her job, and ditched her charges before their parents returned home.
The kids are okay, their parents are livid, and the teen sitter is behind bars.
Actually, 18-year-old Mia Kemper was released from jail on her own recognizance. Which is a good thing considering she would have probably had a hard time finding someone to bail her sorry behind out of the slammer after they found out that the young children she abandoned were her brother’s.
According to police, Kemper has been charged with three counts of child endangerment for leaving her brother’s children, ages 7, 4 and 2 alone. Reports say the teen admitted that she put the kids to bed, and took off for home.
Kemper also told police that she tried contacting her brother and his fiancee, but they wouldn’t answer her texts. After several attempts to text her sibling about her desire to go home, Kemper told law enforcement officers that she got mad and went home leaving the young kids asleep in bed.
Investigators say Kemper’s brother’s fiancee arrived home an hour later, and found the children alone. She called the cops and then confronted Kemper, who confessed to deserting the kids.
Talk about poor decision-making.
When I was a teen I babysat a family with eight children under the age of 10. Believe me there were many times when I wanted to walk away and never come back, but I didn’t.
Why?
Money had nothing to do with it. Rather, common sense and the fear of what my parents would have done to me prompted me to honor my commitment despite being used as a human bib, a jungle gym and target practice for plastic gun-wielding Rambo-wannabes.
In Kemper’s case the kids were asleep. C’mon! How much easier can your job get?
All she had to do is remain coherent. Instead, she got peeved that her brother wouldn’t answer her text messages, so she bailed on three innocent kids, who could have woken up to an empty house and wandered out into the dark night looking for their sitter… and that’s the best case scenario.
What’s more, Kemper is 18. She is old enough to vote, yet she doesn’t have the ability to grasp that leaving young kids alone in a house could cause major problems.
How stupid (or selfish) can you be?
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