At this point, I’d continue with the avoidance tactics, just out of morbid curiousity over how long it’ll take them to clue into the fact that you’re never going to say, “Yes.”
Because you can argue against an excuse. If you give a reason for a refusal, it is possible to believe that refuting the reason means the person will agree next time. Repeating No with no other accoutrements does not allow that out.
You don’t even need to say “I hate kids”. No is a complete sentence.
Regards,
Shodan
No, they aren’t.
No, it isn’t - it’s a pain in the ass.
Miller, I’m kinda curious myself, as to how long these folks can be this clueless. We should start a betting pool. 
Sure it does. I suspect this person is so into her own needs that nothing short of her dearest offspring graduating from college or simply not communicating with her is going to stop her from asking.
I suspect that if you repeated my wordy “I have no intention” speech, you’d still get a woman who thinks that “I have a dinner date with my husband and I haven’t bothered to get a sitter” is an emergency and someone who has “no intention of babysitting” really means that they just haven’t been exposed to her particularly precious and incredibly special children long enough - moreover that if Motorgirl were a “good friend” she would of course do this so she can’t possible mean No.
Sorry, if you are a coward, then you’ll get walked on for ever. Ask my mother about being a doormat, she must like it since she’s been that way for 72 years.
Each doormat or cowards has their own reason, and you need to understand why you are a doormat in order to change. Some peoples’ reasons are simple, others are complex.
Some people we taught – sometimes in words but more often by actions and reactions – that they were not allowed to say no. Often it has to do with self-esteem issues. We feel that we must do what others say in order to be liked. For others, there is a social contact issue at stake. They mistakenly believe that that they must act polite to others, even though the other person is taking advantage of them – or trying to. Since people are complex creatures, there usually are more than one factor involved, and most people are better in some circumstances and with some people than they are with others.
If you can figure out why you have resistance to telling someone no, then it will be easier to decide how to handle it.
Ask yourself why you don’t want to say anything. Then after you give yourself a half-assed answer, such as “I’m a coward” then find a new question. “Why are you a coward in this circumstance?” What times are you not a coward? What is the difference?
Once you have a better idea of what is causing the problem, you can find a better solution.
“Well, I would babysit, but I can’t violate that court order and go back to jail…”
Researching and listing available child care is a time consuming process. Why should the OP go to that trouble?
Look, I’m a parent and I’d love to have folks babysit now and then, but Jesus, after six months of “No,” it’s time to take a frickin’ hint. Some people like babysitting and some do not.
However, Shodan has a point. If you have an excuse that implies that at some point in the future, you might be free. I’m in th ecamp of saying “I’m sorry, we don’t like babysitting. You should ask someone else from now on.” If these jackasses react negatively that says more about them than it does you.
When someone asks me to do something that I just don’t do, I just tell them, “Oh, no, I don’t do that.” It’s very simple- you’re not saying that you can’t, which invites them to prod and offer solutions to make it so that you can, it’s telling them that their proposal is not even within the realm of possibility, because I just don’t do that. Most people drop it without further ado.
Hey, I know these people! I ended up telling them straight out “We don’t babysit”. Cue hurt face and, I have no doubt, many hours of conversations with her other friends about “Why wouldn’t Cazzle want to babysit my little angel? I thought she liked kids”, but it didn’t keep her away for good, it just stopped her asking. She was impervious to subtlety and I was tired of turning her down every time she asked.
I would consider babysitting, perhaps, if I thought I wouldn’t be taken advantage of. She’s never given me any reason to think that agreeing, even once, wouldn’t open the floodgates and put me on the hook every time she gets a whim to do anything. There have been times that I’ve felt bad about refusing because she has genuinely been in a bind… but on the flip side, I’ve witnessed her lying to another friend about why she “needed” her to babysit (She phoned a friend to say she was still stuck in her nursing class, and could the friend pick her son up from daycare as she’d offered to if the class ran overtime… In actual fact she was out shopping and had been for more than an hour, the class having finished early).
I try not to feel guilty about it. She chose to have those kids and she should have known there are sacrifices that come with that. Some are big, some are small - like cutting short your trip to the craft store because your child needs to be picked up from daycare. If people are kind enough to help you out, then that’s something to be grateful and thankful for - but it’s not a service they are obligated to provide.
Clue them in to babysitting co-ops.
We’re part of a pool of 20-odd families who trade babysitting amongst ourselves (it’s all done on a point system based on number of kids, number of hours, travel, etc.). That way we get adult sitters that we know and that can take care of kids (because they have their own, and they’re still alive…) and it doesn’t cost us anything.
Just wanted y’all to know that this has been a really interesting and enlightening thread for me. I haven’t had to dodge many babysitting pleas yet, but a lot of my friends are getting married, so I’m always wary that it’s the next logical step.
Oof - I’ve neglected a lot of responses in this thread. It might be my most successful thread ever! I’ll post more today as I have time.
Thanks everyone, this has been very interesting.
Don’t borrow trouble. We have tons of friends with kids and kids ourselves. We’ve asked friends to sit twice - and the people we asked to sit offered first. We’ve never been asked to sit anyone else’s kids - unless its been structured as a playdate (which is a win win sitting situation - you have your own, they play well with their kids, their kids come over for an evening or afternoon - your kids are busy with their kids - and after four or five its benevolent neglect - you don’t really need to watch them - they get some time to themselves).
Arrange to be in a room watching Ghostbusters 2 with your friends who might want you to babysit. When you get to the part about Janine telling Dana about feeding her baby french bread pizza, don’t laugh. Ask out loud, “What’s wrong with that?”
You need to nip these things in the bud. It’s too late now but the very first time they hinted that they thought you’d be a great baby sitter, you should’ve corrected them. I’ve had friends make those kind of overtures when they were pregnant and I always laughed heartily at the idea. Now all my friends know that I am not the person to call.
For the current situation, I would say “I’m sorry, I’m not comfortable being responsible for young children.” I agree with everyone else, if you don’t make it plain that you don’t babysit, they’re gonna keep asking.
My brother bugged me to babysit for his first child. He was 19 when she was born and still wanted to go and do things. I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable taking care of a child that small. He assured me it was easy. I told him that I didn’t know a thing about changing diapers. He, still not taking the hint told me that it wasn’t so bad.
I finally had to tell him that I just don’t like little kids before he took the hint. Either that, or he got too pissed off to ask me again. ;p
I hate to tell you, but you’ve been setting yourself up for being bothered for the last six or eight months (depending on how far before birth they started hinting). If you know that the parents are people who take advantage of others, and you know that they expect other people to be enthused about babysitting, you need to nip that shit right in the bud. (On preview: bingo, tremorviolet! :D) Making “excuses” is only inviting them to ask again, when your excuse is likely to have expired.
Everybody else has said it, so let me repeat it: Just Say No. Not “no, not today” or “no, not this week” but “No.” Remember what you learned about peer pressure? There’s not an expiration date on that sort of learning - people are going to keep trying to get you to do things that you don’t want to, or you know you shouldn’t, your whole life. Either start being okay with telling them no, or watch a hell of a lot more daytime tv - your excuse repertoire is going to have to expand. 
Find out what the going hourly rate for babysitters is, and then quadruple it. Smile sweetly and say, “You didn’t expect us to give up our evening for free, did you?” When they complain about the price say with a smile, “Perhaps you can find a teenager who’ll charge you a lower rate.”
“We have no interest in babysitting, and that’s not going to change. Continuing to ask us is a waste of all of our time.”
If they have a serious problem with an honest response between friends, I’d say it’s time to really examine the friendship.
I’m back! Hope that not so much time has elapsed that I shouldn’t try to respond to some of the posts.
To catch you all up, my husband and I decided to cave on the Friday night request but couched it in terms of “this is a gift for your anniversary.” I know that this means we may have to fight the issue again in some way, and I hope that we can use some of the doper wisdom when we do it. I also know it was cowardly of me/us to do it when we genuinely didn’t want to.
There have been a lot of really good responses in this thread that I want to try out if the subject comes up again. Thanks to you all, even the joking ones. They also lightened my mood about the situation a lot.
I think you (and a few others) have hit the nail on the head. I don’t think either parent picks up on some of the normal social cues about other people’s discomfort with a request or comment. Alternatively I could be failing to give off the right cues. I can’t say which.
jacquilynne - I don’t know when 14 year olds stopped being trusted as babysitters, but I know only one couple who seems to think a neighbor’s kid would make an acceptable babysitter. All the rest seem to want to obtain professional-level services for free or unrealistically cheap. Like placing help-wanted ads for part-time nanny services for $7/hour.
I sometimes wonder if there has been a major shift in parents giving spending money to kids. When I was 14 I took crappy jobs like babysitting because there was no other source of cash for me. Do parents these days supply so many of their kids’ wants they don’t need to go earn money?
Gack! I know that on an intellectual level, I just haven’t gotten to the point where I can do it. I know I have to yank off the bandaid, but I’m taking forever to steel myself. Why so wimpy?! Why do I care so much?! So often when I finally psych myself up for this big confrontation that I know will ensue when I stop being a pansy and tell people what I need to tell them, or ask what I need to ask them it… turns out to be nothing. I’ve built it up in my mind as this Big Thing and turns out it’s not a Big Thing to them. They’re just “Oh yeah, no problem!” :smack:
More tomorrow - time to go make dinner!