Wow, where do I start? Well, last November and December I started taking care of a little girl who was 17 months old at the time. I took care of her once a week for free since her parents work with my husband and were not in a great place financially at the time. When my husband came up with the idea of helping them out this way so that they wouldn't have to pay for daycare,
I thought it was great, I was impressed by his altruism to be honest, and I thought it would be a great chance for my son to have a playmate.

Things went well for the first 6 weeks. The little girl is a doll and kept my son, who is a month younger than her, busy. Then, on the 8th week, she was dropped off by her mom who told us that her daughter had been very sick all week with a deep cough, runny nose and what looked like pink eye, but that she seemed much better that morning. My husband and I looked at each other not really knowing what to do. So the mother left to go to school for her final exam and here we were trying to keep the two toddlers apart, which, if you have children, you know is virtually impossible to do.

The little girl was sicker than my son has ever been. She could not breathe through her nose, had a croupy cough and discharge from her nose and eyes. We were mortified. Mind you, this was the week before Christmas and we were not too happy about exposing our son to what seemed to be a pretty violent cold and have his Christmas ruined. So, my husband called work to see if he could get her father to come pick her up and was informed that he had called in sick and was at home. WTF???

My husband then proceeded to call the father who would not pick up the phone, so he packed up the little girl, put her in our son's carseat and drove her to her house. Her father had been sleeping and seemed disgruntled if not altogether annoyed at the fact that we brought his daughter back home. I, for one, do not think we did anything wrong, This poor child fell asleep the moment she was placed in the car seat, woke up once during the ride to cough and then fell back asleep. She should never have been woken up in the morning and taken out in the cold and rain just so that her father, who was not feeling well, could sleep in. i mean, come on, when my husband and I are sick, we suck it up and perform our parental duties rather than impose our sick child on another family.

And how could they justify exposing our son to their daughter's illness for the sake of their own comfort....especially during the holidays? When the mother got out of her exam she too seemed totally put off and insisted that her daughter "was not that sick". Never once did they apologize for what they did. And to top it off they kept hinting that we were in the wrong and owed them an apology. Scandalous.

To add insult to injury they never once thanked me for taking care of their daughter free of charge. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't do things to help others in order to receive praise. Far from it. But I was raised to show gratitude, be humble, and respectful. People like this seem like they expect others to do for them. This "world owes me" attitude is ridiculous. Users. And I have a zero tolerance for users.

A few days after this incident my husband took a Christmas present (which we had already bought prior to everything going down) for the little girl. They had nothing for my son. Not a card, nothing. Once again, we do not give expecting to receive, but come on! I was offended for my son. I just felt so used and totally turned off by their lack of gratitude and friendliness. A simple "thanks for offering to take care of our daughter and sorry about bringing her over when she was so sick" would have sufficed.They even so much as mentioned to another co-worker that the gift was probably because we felt so bad about not wanting to take care of her when she sick. Ugh. The nerve of some people.