I have gotten opinions on both side of this question. I’m going to refrain from my point of view, 'cause I might be wrong.
Scenario: 17 year old female babysitter is bathing 6 yr old female relative. The kid picks up the babysitter’s cell phone and accidently douses it, killing the phone.
Is it proper form for the parents to offer to replace the phone? Or perhaps go in halfs with the babysitter? I can see that the teen should not have had the phone in arm’s reach of the child. OTOH, when I had little kids and they damaged something I made offer to replace the damaged item. What do you think?
If you have household contents insurance, it may be covered. If it were me, I think I’d bear the cost either way, unless it was obvious that it happened as a result of extreme negligence on the sitter’s part.
i’d say that going halves on a new phone for the sitter is generous, but bordering on fair.
sitter didn’t sabotage the phone; it was destroyed in an “occupational occurance” though allowing a 6 year old reach of the phone while bathing was negligent. if it were a professional care-taker, i’d say tough bones to them. but you say the sitter is a teenager… (s)he probably should learn responsibility when it comes to personal property, but still should be given the benefit of the doubt to a point. perhaps you could reach an agreement where yourself, sitter, and perhaps sitter’s parents split the cost of a new phone. or just sitter & yourself – and maybe you can talk about whether it really is a 50\50 liability, or maybe 70\30… or what have you.
or, you could just be an ass, and say “your property, your problem” like a real employer likely would. you’ll prolly have to interview a few new sitters though, in that case, before you go out again.
Yeah, I’m failing to see whatever it is that the OP perceives as the finer points here. When your kid breaks someone’s stuff, you replace it.
Seriously? Your opinion is that this girl should be out $100 for being so “negligent” as to keep her cell phone near her in the presence of her charge? Also, the kid is six, not two. Six is old enough to know that you don’t touch other people’s stuff. (For that matter, it’s also old enough to bathe yourself, but I suppose that’s a whole other issue.)
I’d say that you can best teach the babysitter “responsibility when it comes to personal property” by paying for her phone. By failing to pay for her phone, what you mostly teach her is “People will both fail to teach their kids basic respect for others’ property, and screw you when their kids inevitably fail to respect your property.”
We’re talking about a typically developing six-year-old, not one with developmental delays, correct? By the time a child is old enough to learn to read, it’s not unreasonable for anyone, even people much older than 17, to assume that the uncontrolable desire to drop expensive objects into water is long past. This isn’t a grabby toddler we’re talking about!
The parents ought to replace the phone, and perhaps have the child contribute a nominal amount from her allowance to hammer home the lesson about not taking things that aren’t yours because they sometimes break when you do.
Parents replace the phone. Parents also teach six year old to take a bath by herself. Babysitter is told that it’s not wise to have electric/electronic items near a container of water.
Yeah, my coworker put a Razr through the wash and somehow it still worked (somewhat) afterwards. But then he put it through again, and that was the end of it… And he dropped his replacement in the toilet, and the replacement survived that too! This guy needs a waterproof phone, obviously…
In my house, the 6 year old would be paying for the phone, one chore at a time. I’d front the money to the babysitter, and keep a running tally of chores worked at $1 apiece on the fridge until her debt was worked off. If she was really, really sorry for what she did, I might not charge interest.
As for the bathing - most six year olds still need help shampooing and rinsing their hair completely, especially if it’s long. I would still expect the babysitter to help with that part, and to sit inside the bathroom with a book or talking to the kid for the rest. Six year olds are still squirrelly sometimes, and I had one knock herself out sitting in the tub (her butt slid forward and her torso fell back and she hit her head. I watched the whole thing happen so fast and had to grab her head up out of the water while she was still unconscious.)
If this point is the sole justification for seeing it any other way than, “parents owe babysitter new cell phone”, allow me:
If the 17 year old, for whatever, parent-approved reason, is bathing the child, in a room not traditionally known for its telecommunications connectivity (except in the house I bought, but that’s another thread), and something were to happen to the child in the tub, would the parents prefer that the call to them or 911 wait for the sitter to travel at two rooms away?