Being coerced into babysitting is the worst. But what would you do if the kids in question were uncontrollable and you were blamed for it?

In today’s story, a woman was told she would have to pay for the damages when the kid she was told to watch damaged a wall.

The parents think she didn’t watch them properly.

Would you pay? Or fight it?

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA because a kid damaged a wall while I was supposed to watch him?

I (22F), went with my family to a gathering with some of their close friends.

They were another family who I will call the host family, and they had 2 kids, 12M who I will call Tyler, and 16M who I will call James.

Another family who I will call guest family was also visiting with their kid, who is around the same age as Tyler, I will call him David.

All the parents were sitting at the table, talking to each other and drinking.

Since they were apparently too busy with that, Tyler’s mother told me to watch him and David.

This house was somewhat large, not a mansion, but like a suburban mcmansion, so they were going to be out of sight most of the time.

She felt obliged to watch them against her will.

I didn’t expect or agree to take care of someone’s kids, but my parents backed the host family’s mom up, and told me to do it anyway.

My parents aren’t people who take no for an answer, so I didn’t really have a choice if I didn’t want to enter an endless argument with them.

I decided to ask if James can at least do something, and the host family’s response was, “oh he is busy doing something in his room.”

I thought that maybe he could still at least help just in case he was gonna be free soon. I knocked on his room, entered, and he was just playing video games.

I asked if he could help me watch Tyler because his parents asked me to watch him.

He of course refused.

She was on her own, and a lot was expected of her.

I told this to the host family, and they didn’t seem to care, they still wanted me to do it, and weren’t even going to ask him to help.

And so there’s me, sitting in the living room, watching Tyler and David playing together, being loud and obnoxious to the point where the host parents came in several times to lecture me about how I am not keeping them calm.

Eventually things escalated so much that the two kids were throwing things at each other in some sort of “dodgeball” match.

Things reached a boiling point.

At one point, Tyler threw a baseball as hard as he could at the other kid, which missed and dented the wall.

The parents heard this, and came into the living room screaming.

They told me how it is all my fault that the wall is damaged, and that I should have looked after them better.

Keep in mind, I did try to get the kids to stop by telling them, but I never intervened physically because I was afraid that the host family would get mad at me for that.

Now because of this incident, the host family is asking me to pay for the damages. Am I in the wrong for this?

I feel like even if this wasn’t really my responsibility to look after their kids, I still understand that I could have done a bit more to stop what happened.

AITA?

Yikes. At 12, he should be babysitting!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this.

Sound advice.

He’s a preteen, not a child.

More advice.

Another reader chimes in.

This comment sums it up.

She owes them nothing.

Blaming her for their kid’s behavior is just crazy.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.