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Parents might complain that it's hard to find a good babysitter or childcare provider, but care providers are just as quick to point out that it's hard to find good clients. It's common for care providers to go unpaid, to have unrealistic expectations placed on them, and for the family essentially to treat them like their property while they're employed by them.
Because of conditions like this, TikToker @braonain1 shared her "rules" for families she worked with, including time off, getting paid before leaving the home, not providing car seats, sticking to her rates, limited playdates, no divorced households, and a set schedule.
She claimed she was this "strict" after being "used and abused" in the past.
That video quickly went viral with over 2000 comments, 927 thousand likes, and 7.5 million views. Fellow nannies and babysitters filled the comments with their own horror stories of being "used and abused," and the TikToker later shared that she'd been overwhelmed with duets and stitches of her video.
One such stitch video came from Elena Cirillo of @elenacirillocomedy on TikTok, in which she drove home the importance of setting firm boundaries with families, especially entitled parents.
In her video, Cirillo detailed the family vacation that clearly was never going to happen.
"One time on Care.com, a family asked me to go to Disney with them."
"I asked how much the payment would be, and she said, 'Oh, well, we would be covering your vacation, so we're going to cover the flight and the hotel.'"
"I said, 'You think I want to go on vacation with you guys and watch your kids the entire time?'"
You can watch the video here:
Cirillo's own video quickly garnered 84.9 thousand likes and 1.1 million views, with care providers also filling her comments section with their own stories of host family vacation woes.
Some showed support for Cirillo's story and her decision not to take the job.
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
Others shared their own stories of being taken advantage of by host families.
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
@elenacirillocomedy/TikTok
Families should be able to go on vacations, and depending on the extensiveness of the vacation or how crowded the area will be, or if the parents would like to go out for a dinner date one night, it could be perfectly reasonable to bring someone along to assist with the children.
However, those individuals deserve to be compensated beyond the flight, food, and other basic amenities of the trip. The minute they're required to care for someone's children who are not their own, it legally becomes work, and work should be compensated, period.