A mom just posted on a local facebook group, looking for care for her child "lasting for about 5 hours, and need to start in an hour". But, the thing is, I keep seeing these posts lately: "I need a sitter for my 6 month old tonight", "I need someone today from noon to 4pm". Are these people really dropping their kids with someone they've never met?! I just do not understand.

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Must be a small town where everybody knows everybody and trusts everyone.

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I just got a message from a woman who wants to meet me on Sunday and wants her kid to start 3 days later. Way to leave it to the last minute!

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I do that...but on my wall....where my FRIENDS will see it and volunteer for kid duty.

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Worse than that is when you see posts like this on Craigslist for childcare being needed in an hour or overnight that night. At least on FB you have a page to at least kinda see what a person is like. Still an awful idea though. I don’t personally have children of my own but I cannot for the life of me imagine doing such a thing.

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I have also seen this on my towns child care page. People will post looking for sitters for that night. Typically for date nights. It is a pretty small town but that’s too much for me.

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I see that on several Mom's FB groups which doesn't scare me as much as when I see it on the garage sale groups.

Craigslist Killer comes to mind.

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I've never seen that on Facebook. I have enough trouble dealing politely with people who want to meet, enroll, and start care in a couple days. OYE

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I see last minute postings here but what seems to happen is they just found a job or lost childcare and need to start immediately. Usually nothing they were able to plan for.

For just babysitting, it's usually on my wall from friends needing a sitter for a date night.

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They are in a group on facebook, that anyone can request to join. Here are 3 from the past week (all different moms):

Looking for a babysitter for about 5 hours to watch my six month old daughter starting in about an hour. My plans sorta fell through at the last minute.

ISO of a sitter for date night tonight 😁😁 needed at 6pm. (posted at 442pm)

Need someone to come to my home while my kiddos sleep tonight for a couple hours.

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just

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I live in a town of almost 200k people and see these posts in local FB groups every now and then. It's not a small town, people just really do leave their kids with people they don't know well.

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That's how I got my first daycare kid. She saw me on care.com and called at 8 pm on a Sunday night. I live in a small town and didn't know her, and in the intervening years, (after caring for both of her kids), we still don't have any friends in common, except for another one of my daycare parents. I asked if she wanted to come over that night and meet me, but she said no, the baby was already in bed. She wanted to start at 5 am the next morning. (I was desperate for kids!) ;-) I told her I didn't even have a bed for her, and she said she would bring a pack n play. I told her to write out a page of instructions and schedule for this 6 month old child and we had a deal. I hadn't learned about contracts and handbooks at that point. I had her kids for just over 4 years, so sometimes, it miraculously works...and I mean that both ways. I had no idea what I was doing with a daycare business. We had lost the contract that kept our longtime business afloat, and I had to do something. I thought it would be like the 60s when my mom kept kids. I did have the sense to check on licensing, so I was ok there. But, in the end, it was a great thing. That said, I would never, ever do that again.

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