How much time away from your kids is too much?

How much should a dad be involved on a daily basis?

The couple in this story seem to have very different opinions about this.

But that’s not the only issue.

Check out why this dad is tired of looking after his daughters for free.

AITA for wanting to be paid for babysitting my own daughter?

My wife and I live in at a suburban house with our daughter.

Our neighbour next door is a single father with two daughters.

We have been living here for a little more than two years.

My wife really likes watching scary movies but I have never enjoyed them.

She has always had a hard time finding people that have this niche interest and that is why it was such a big deal when we met Walter and found out he also shares this tendency.

At first it worked out for him.

They very quickly started to make plans to watch movies together.

I was invited to be a part of this but refused.

I prefer to just stay at home babysitting Emily and Walter’s daughter while they are in their cinephile reunions.

Sometimes they go to movie theaters but other times they just stay at Walter’s place watching stuff at his home cinema.

They usually have to go to another town in order to catch a specific function of some weird movie so it is normal for them to come back very late.

They eventually started doing stuff outside of watching movies, like going out for dinner.

Walter invited all of us, including the kids, to go with him to a restaurant that a friend of him owned but I said no because it was too expensive.

I insisted on staying with the kids and let the two of them go be themselves.

This has became a regular thing and it is in a way a good deal for me because Walter pays for my wife’s dinner and she can no longer complain about me not taking her to fancy restaurants.

But not anymore.

As both their movie and dinner nights had became so common, I have grown a little tired of the burden of constantly babysitting the girls.

I talk to my wife and Walter about it and he explained that he usually does not like leaving his daughters with babysitters.

He says he is really comfortable knowing that they are being watched by an experienced father like me instead of some teenage girl.

He agreed that it was too much of a load for me and offered to start paying me a standard babysitter fee each time he goes out with my wife.

I thought that was a fair approach to the issue but my wife was fully against it.

She says I should not be paid for babysitting my own daughter nor the daughters of a close friend of our family like Walter.

We have been arguing about this but she insists on this notion and it not open to change.

She even gets mad every time I talk to her about this.

Walter promised me that he will convince her but he does not seem to have been able to do so either.

Here is what folks are talking about.

Yes to all of this. Is he in denial? Bizarre.

Is it too much to ask to watch a movie once in a while?

It will make his neighbor feel less guilty. But why would his wife not like that if she’s cheating?

I don’t know why the neighbor seems to run the show.

LOL couldn’t have put it better myself. I wonder if he’s playing dumb to see what people will say.

I wonder if he falls for scams, too.

What a bizarre situation.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.