We’ve come such a long way in terms of men being engaged and active fathers who put in the time and effort to parent their kids, but, unfortunately, some men still don’t have a clue. A dad of toddler twins had the audacity to wonder on Reddit if he was out of line for yelling at his recently hired, college-age, part-time babysitter for not potty-training his 2-year-olds, eliminating their tantrums, and teaching them to speak.
Oh, sure, this dad’s stance is totally reasonable, said no one, including his wife who was apparently “pissed” for his treatment of the babysitter, whom she “considers a good friend.”
“Our kids are 2 1/2 and quite a handful,” twintwinstwin began on the AITA subreddit. “They have speech delay, don’t really listen, and aren’t potty trained. I tend to just give in to avoid their crying and tantrums. My wife believes discipline will help but it just leads to more tears and no progress.”
Now the couple have hired this babysitter while they go to work. “We’ve told her how we want the kids potty trained and talking soon, and while she definitely takes good care of the kids… there’s no improvement.”
The situation that set this man scratching his chin was when the babysitter relayed how one of the twins had ripped off her clothes and gone to the bathroom on the floor during nap time.
“I lost my temper and told her that wouldn’t have happened if she had worked with the kids the way she should have.” The wife, to her credit, understands it isn’t the college student’s job to raise their kids, but the dad thinks “if you’re in charge of the kids you should be teaching them manners and speech and potty training them.”
As you can imagine, literally everyone commenting thinks this guy is, in fact, the a-hole. Numerous commenters called him out for expecting the sitter and his wife to do things he won’t do himself, with @heatherAntos quipping his position quite accurately, “I refuse to raise my kids and I yelled at a babysitter for not doing my job as a parent. AITA?”
Twitter user @SamanthaRodrgrz summed up pretty much everyone’s feelings for the poor babysitter, writing in a series of four tweets, “As a professional nanny, this makes me FURIOUS. There are so many issues with this. 1. Nannies are not responsible for raising your children. You as the PARENT are responsible. Nannies help children learn skills, but that progress can be completely erased when parents refuse to put in the work and do not continue to teach their kids when the nanny is absent. 2. Nannies are not miracle workers. If children have never been potty trained, do not expect your nanny to pull it out of a goddamn hat. A skill like that needs to happen when the child is ready for it. Some aren’t ready for potty training until age 3. You can try to do it early, but expect a lot of accidents and an uphill battle. 3. Never yell at an employee. Under no circumstances is it ever okay to yell at someone. Especially for something as small as a potty training accident. An accident that you should’ve been expecting as a parent of a potty-training-aged child. Nannies are professionals and they deserve to be treated as such.”
Others criticized the dad for claiming his twins have a “speech delay.” @badmum6 wrote “It’s called the terrible twos for a reason. My son is the same age. He only speaks a little bit, he throws tantrums on the regular, and we haven’t even pretended to talk about potty training. There is nothing wrong with him… he’s 2.”
Twintwinstwin tried to defend himself, but, really, he just made it worse. See, he can’t help the kids because he is “working” during the week and he’s not there weekends, either: “I go out with friends one day and take up extra work the other.” Plus, ladies and gentlemen, he’s tried to help their speech skills, but “the kids don’t sit still long enough and scream unless watching TV” and attempts at potty training have failed because “they don’t care because they can just sit in their diapers.”
As Reddit user Embarrassed-Bride-8 responded so eloquently to this, “Sweet Jesus. Are you actually implying it’s your children’s fault they aren’t potty trained?!”
Look, we get it. Toddlers are hard. Teaching kids is hard. Parenting is hard. Being a child’s caregiver is hard. Children need consistency from all the adults in their lives, as well as patience, boundaries, discipline, guidance, and, of course, love. We hope this dad takes the opinions of the AITA crowd to heart and starts figuring out how to be a good father and husband. His family deserves it!
Check out these celebrity parents who love their nannies.
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