My babysitter's mother, fairly lame rant

The BBQ Pit
81

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
And if mom needed the $20?

Should she not pay for something like, say, a mortgage so that her daughter gets to have a new t-shirt?

The woman might be a beast, but being poor doesn’t make her one.
[/QUOTE]

Well, then I guess maybe she could simply not buy as many cigarettes? The woman has enough money to support at least that habit. Smoking four or five packs less this week certainly wouldn’t hurt her. I was a smoker, and I know how hard it is to quit. But she could smoke less, and not need her daughter’s money as much. If I hadn’t hired Heather, she more likely than not would not have had that money to give her mom. Where would mom have gotten it then?

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[QUOTE=WishIHadACoolName]
Well, then I guess maybe she could simply not buy as many cigarettes?
[/QUOTE]

So, if she’s a smoker she isn’t allowed to get into a bind for money. Got it.

And lord knows a teenager’s clothing budget has to come first, no matter what.

The girl has an income. Why shouldn’t she contribute some, most, or even all of it to the family fortunes?

83

Interesting to hear that there’s a teenage babysitter exemption to the in-home worker rules. I know that when I was paying a cleaning lady for coming in one day a week, under the rules then in existence her wages, small though they were, were well above the threshold to be paying Social Security taxes for her. You’d think that with all the Nannygates that have embarrassed politicians, it might be mentioned just once that those rules don’t apply to all in-home workers. Not having employed full-time teenagers, I never investigated whether they fell under a separate exemption.

Ignorance successfully fought.

84

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
And lord knows a teenager’s clothing budget has to come first, no matter what.

The girl has an income. Why shouldn’t she contribute some, most, or even all of it to the family fortunes?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know about you, jsgoddess, but when I was this girl’s age I was still outgrowing most of my clothes – I kept growing in height till I was 16, and filled out about two sizes during high school. Plus my clothes would actually get worn out. Strange concept, I know. As soon as I was able to earn money, I was expected to use my money to buy my own clothes. Which I did. I don’t remember getting any clothes from my parents except for an occasional birthday or Christmas sweater from the time I was able to hold a regular part-time job.

So it’s not entirely unreasonable to think that this girl might need some of her money for clothing. Yes, contributing to the family coffers is helpful – but she’s supposed to get nothing for her labors and continue to wear threadbare, outgrown clothing? There has to be a happy medium. Taking 100% of the girl’s money ain’t it.

85

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
So, if she’s a smoker she isn’t allowed to get into a bind for money. Got it.

And lord knows a teenager’s clothing budget has to come first, no matter what.

The girl has an income. Why shouldn’t she contribute some, most, or even all of it to the family fortunes?
[/QUOTE]

[Bolding is mine.]

Now I’m following along with the conversation and am curious as to where I missed this. Could you point it out to me and who said it? Thanks.

As to everything else, my eventual-to-be-ex husband’s mother pretty much took everything he made as a teenager to support her stay-at-home-and-do-nothing-but-eat-Frito’s lifestyle. This went on from the time he was old enough to have a paper route until after he graduated. In the interim, both of her parents died and left her a substantial amount of money that she just pissed away. To say that he’s bitter now would be an understatement and if I could rub the magic genie bottle and have someone go back in time to somewhat look out for him like what the OP appears to be doing, I’d be one very happy woman about it indeed.

Other than that, I agree with non-monetary ‘bonuses.’ And, if my mother-in-law was any indication with the men who frequented her company and the expenditures she partook of, there was many a way that she could have refrained before take all (or even most) of his money. In her case though, it was better for HIM to give things up, than her.

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[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
So it’s not entirely unreasonable to think that this girl might need some of her money for clothing. Yes, contributing to the family coffers is helpful – but she’s supposed to get nothing for her labors and continue to wear threadbare, outgrown clothing? There has to be a happy medium. Taking 100% of the girl’s money ain’t it.
[/QUOTE]

If the family is struggling badly enough, which I have zero way of knowing of course, then there might not be a happy medium.

And since the accusation by the OP is that she took all of the money once, I don’t think we’re necessarily talking about a situation where a happy medium hasn’t been found.

87

I never said women shouldn’t work. My wife makes ALL of the money in our household and I consider myself lucky to be able to stay home with my boys and it’s mostly because of her.

It just seemed to me that you were working, instead of staying home, for not much more than you pay your babysitter. If this is not the case then I apologize, but that’s how your posts sounded to me.

I still think you should pay her more even if only a little (and that has nothing to do with her mother).

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[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
So it’s not entirely unreasonable to think that this girl might need some of her money for clothing. Yes, contributing to the family coffers is helpful – but she’s supposed to get nothing for her labors and continue to wear threadbare, outgrown clothing? There has to be a happy medium. Taking 100% of the girl’s money ain’t it.
[/QUOTE]

And we don’t know who buys her clothes, do we? If there has been a comment in this thread that indicates her mother does not buy her clothes, I’ve missed it.

We don’t know if the taking of $100 dollars (an entire weeks wages) was a one time thing, a one time a month thing, or an every week thing. We don’t know how that household runs. Neither does the OP.

I, for one, am not going to jump on the mother for expecting a wage earning daughter to help out without knowing details that are none of my business.

WishIHadACoolName, when your children start working part-time in high school, will you let them do with the money whatever they want?

89

There’s a big difference between letting the kid have all of her earnings to splurge if the family isn’t well off and taking all of her wages. It’s going to depend on how often it happens whether it’s something to worry about, but it’s also safe to assume that a teenage girl, given any disposable income at all, is going to spend at least a good portion of it on clothes. Of course, if her mom isn’t buying her clothes, and if her mom is taking her money, then she’s not going to buy any of her own clothes, either, is she?

Expecting her to either spend her money for things that the parents would otherwise be buying – such as, in my case, clothes – or expecting her to save at least a portion of her money, or even expecting her pay “rent” to help the family out (although in our family that wasn’t expected till one was old enough to move out but chose to stay at home), are all reasonable expectations of reasonable parents. But expecting her to fork over 100% of her earnings? How is that helping her learn anything except that her mother is exploiting her for her wage-earning capacity?

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[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
There’s a big difference between letting the kid have all of her earnings to splurge if the family isn’t well off and taking all of her wages.
[/QUOTE]

We don’t know which is the case. I entirely agree, the latter is not good anymore than the former is. The girl said her mother took one weeks wages, not that her mother has been taking all the money she’s earned. We don’t know what is going on. For all we know, the mother is trying to stop the girl from spending the money on drinking Scotch Whiskey all night long, buying her own $4 a pack cigarettes, and taking her own worthless boyfriend to the movies on Saturday night. We just don’t know, and I find the villification of the mother (given what we know) to be pointless.

91

So we should discount everything WishIHadACoolName has said, who obviously cares about this girl and is trying to help her in what she perceives as a bad family situation? Frankly, while we may not have enough facts to vilify the mom, we certainly have enough to be highly skeptical of her parenting skills, judging by the fact that her daughter prefers to spend time at WIHACN’s house to her own. I’ve seen a lot of kids in situations that are, like this girl’s, pretty easy to diagnose as being less than ideal family situations – just the non-working boyfriend living there is enough to send up giant red flags for me – and I’m inclined to believe that what WIHACN has witnessed firsthand over a two-year period is, in fact, true, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

I’ll be very interested to see what happens with the girl’s wages next week.

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[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
Frankly, while we may not have enough facts to vilify the mom, we certainly have enough to be highly skeptical of her parenting skills, judging by the fact that her daughter prefers to spend time at WIHACN’s house to her own.
[/quote]

Yes, of course, there is nothing teenagers enjoy better than hanging out at home.

And I.

Look, I’m not insisting that your viewpoint, or the OP’s viewpoint, is wrong; I’m not insisting that my viewpoint is right. I’m simply saying that we don’t know.

93

And I’m saying that the OP stands a better chance than us of knowing, and her viewpoint is that the girl’s home situation is far from stellar. So why aren’t you willing to accept that maybe, just maybe, she can recognize a crummy home life when she sees it?

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[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
And I’m saying that the OP stands a better chance than us of knowing, and her viewpoint is that the girl’s home situation is far from stellar. So why aren’t you willing to accept that maybe, just maybe, she can recognize a crummy home life when she sees it?
[/QUOTE]

Because all that the OP knows of the home comes from the girl. Were you never a dissatisfied teenager? I don’t know the OP well enough to trust her judgement. Or not trust her judgement, as the case may be. I’m neutral. I’ll wait to hear more before I make my judgement.

(On review of the thread, I note that WIHACN says that this is not the first time the mother has taken all the girl’s money. That may make a difference. If it happens once a month, and the girl gets to use the other $300 however she wants, I have no problem with that. If it happens three times a month, I do.)

95

[QUOTE=Frank]

WishIHadACoolName, when your children start working part-time in high school, will you let them do with the money whatever they want?
[/QUOTE]

I’m hoping that the “don’t spend it all” example my husband and I set will rub off. If my kids work, I will insist on them at least putting a portion into their bank accounts, whether it goes into the account each child has already had since infancy or into an account they will open on their own. I would do the one thing my mother never did, which is to sit down and help them budget and teach them the difference between wants, needs, and goals.

My 8 year old already has financial visions of grandeur and has proven himself to be a good “saver”. He has about $70 that hasn’t made it into his bank account, and he has taken it places intending to spend it, but usually rethinks his motives once he sees the price of stuff. “I’d really like a new Gameboy game, but it took me a really long time to get $30. I’ll just save it for my Mustang”

I certainly hope I won’t turn into my own mother… here, let me put that away for you… and then it went into lottery tickets and gambling machines. I guess that’s why I’m hypersensitive to Heather’s situation. My mom did it to me, right down to the point where she screwed me out of my education. I don’t want that to happen to Heather.

96

Well, that truly sucks, Wish. Yeah, you probably are hypersensitive in this area, but that doesn’t mean that Heather isn’t getting a raw deal. Like Frank, I’m not willing to vilify anybody in this situation, because I simply don’t know enough, and even you can’t be completely sure that Heather is telling you all the truth, the whole truth, so help her God.

So, what would you have wanted somebody to do to help you, when you were in Heather’s (possible) situation, Wish?

97

[QUOTE=Flyhalf]

It just seemed to me that you were working, instead of staying home, for not much more than you pay your babysitter. If this is not the case then I apologize, but that’s how your posts sounded to me.

[/QUOTE]

Even if that was the case, she doesn’t need to apologize or feel bad for doing it. If I choose to pay for a babysitter so I can go do volunteer work, does that make me a bad parent?

People work for different reasons. The amount of money you clear after daycare is not the criteria everyone uses to decide if working is worthwhile for them. I think too often in our society we look at working parents and say “oh, that mom has to work so it’s ok, but that other woman’s family has plenty of money so she must just work because she is greedy and doesn’t care about her kids.”

98

I just had a similar conversation with a friend whose daughter went out of state with the woman and her baby (under 3). She watched the child alone for 20 hours of this weekend trip. The daughter is 19. She was paid $120 for the whole weekend. I thought that was pretty chintzy, but on the other hand, she should have negotiated the price before she agreed to do it.

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[QUOTE=WishIHadACoolName]

Thanks for this. It really puts me at ease.
[/QUOTE]
You’re welcome. Glad I could allay any concerns that resulted from the out-of-line and incorrect accusation posted to you. Speaking of which. . .
[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]

Interesting to hear that there’s a teenage babysitter exemption to the in-home worker rules. I know that when I was paying a cleaning lady for coming in one day a week, under the rules then in existence her wages, small though they were, were well above the threshold to be paying Social Security taxes for her. You’d think that with all the Nannygates that have embarrassed politicians, it might be mentioned just once that those rules don’t apply to all in-home workers. Not having employed full-time teenagers, I never investigated whether they fell under a separate exemption.

Ignorance successfully fought.
[/QUOTE]
So you come about your “knowledge” of the tax code by hearing media reports about politicians’ adult nannies and your own personal experience with adult cleaning staff, and somehow think that gives you enough knowledge to accuse someone of illegal tax evasion?

You didn’t preface your post by acknowleding that you don’t know the first thing about tax laws. You didn’t suggest she look into whether or not she might have to withhold taxes (seeing as how you don’t know, yourself). You didn’t ask if she was aware of any obligations she might have with regard to withholding. No, you told her she “should. . . be paying Social Security on her wages.” You told her that “technically [it is] taxable income.” And in fact, neither one of those things is true. You basically flat out accused her of violating the law, not to criticize her of course, but to “caution” her not to talk about her illegal activities in public, lest the IRS get wind of it somehow, seeing as how they “might take a very different view indeed.”

What an obnoxious thing to do. I hope that your ignorance is fought enough that next time you’re tempted to make such an ugly accusation without a shred of actual knowledge about the subject matter, you’ll do everyone a favor and at least have the decency to look it up to find out if you’re even remotely right.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]

I just had a similar conversation with a friend whose daughter went out of state with the woman and her baby (under 3). She watched the child alone for 20 hours of this weekend trip. The daughter is 19. She was paid $120 for the whole weekend. I thought that was pretty chintzy, but on the other hand, she should have negotiated the price before she agreed to do it.
[/QUOTE]
Sounds to me more like she got $120 cash; paid travel expenses, including food and lodging; and better than 50% of her time spent as vacation (seeing as how she only “worked” 20 out of approximately 48 hours).

When I was in college (admittedly back in the bronze age), I got paid $25/day for staying with kids when their parents went away for the weekend. In today’s market, my boss pays his son’s nanny $100/day if she has to stay at the house when my boss travels. Sounds like your friend’s daughter got a pretty nice deal at $60 a day plus meals, expenses and vacation time.

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[QUOTE=WishIHadACoolName]
I certainly hope I won’t turn into my own mother… here, let me put that away for you… and then it went into lottery tickets and gambling machines. I guess that’s why I’m hypersensitive to Heather’s situation. My mom did it to me, right down to the point where she screwed me out of my education. I don’t want that to happen to Heather.
[/QUOTE]

OK, I can understand that. Let’s hope it’s not.