We have always had fantastic experiences using nanny services when traveling. Unfortunately, this…read morewas not the case with Sitterwise. It's honestly still upsetting over a week later, so I felt the need to share.
We were traveling to Carlsbad for a wedding, and I contacted Sitterwise 5 days before the event to request a sitter for our two boys, ages 3 and 1.5. I filled out our family profile, made the request, and was told I would be matched with a sitter within 24 hours. The next day, about 30 hours later, I hadn't heard back and my request was still showing as "pending." I reached out to them again and soon after was matched with a sitter. I was initially a bit concerned reading the sitter's profile, which only stated her experience as a high school teacher and mother to a grown son, with no reference to taking care of babies and toddlers.
The morning of the wedding, I texted our sitter to give her the heads up that our littlest had picked up a cold (no fever, but a cough/runny nose). Later that day, our sitter arrived and we spent about an hour introducing her to our kids, and despite a clingy baby, all seemed great. I prepared a bunch of notes for her on bedtime routines, dinner, etc., and we left.
At 6 pm, just as we sat down to dinner at the wedding, I received a text from the sitter saying she needed me to call her. When she answered the phone, she was clearly very distraught. She said our youngest was crying for me and she was having a hard time handling our 3-year-old, who was hitting his brother and laughing, and from what it sounded like, generally acting like a 3-year-old. She said she couldn't complete the job and needed us to come back...
A few things that I remember vividly from that call:
"I'm really sorry, I'm only used to high school-aged kids"
"I think your son and I just don't get along"
"I called my husband and he said, 'you're the adult'"
"I know I can't hit/spank him but I'm not sure how to get him to behave"
Our minds were blown. We of course left the wedding immediately and raced back to the hotel. When we got to the room, the sitter was upset, both of our boys were upset, and she was running around grabbing random items like the couch accent pillows that she had "put on timeout." Hot tip: the kid doesn't care if you put the couch pillow that he threw on timeout...
The sitter was crying and I was completely taken aback and just trying to calm her down and get her out of there. She started to say something like "you don't have to pay me" to which I interrupted and said of course we will pay you. I later found out that she took this as me saying we would pay for the FULL night we originally requested that would have ended at 11 pm, and this is what I was charged for when I checked the receipt (Sitterwise did later refund the extra 4.5 hours I was charged). She left, we were unable to attend 90% of the wedding, and the cherry on top was when she accidentally texted me instead of her boss, explaining that she left because the little one was sick...Clearly not being honest about why she was leaving early.
Ultimately, I blamed Sitterwise for the awful sitter matching, not the sitter. Our sitter was super sweet, but she was obviously correct when she said she was only used to high school-aged kids, and I should have gone with my gut when I saw that her profile had no mention of caring for young kids. That fact was clear when I heard her through our baby monitor talking to my 3-year-old like he was 15 - repeatedly asking him what was wrong with the baby and why wouldn't he take the bottle, and asking him to help her. Hearing him very clearly confused and not sure what to do was pretty rough on my mama heart.
In the past, nannies have come with age-appropriate toys and activities, she came with nothing. In the past, nannies have known how to appropriately handle a toddler outburst, she made it seem like our child was the devil. The first thing our son said to us when we came back to the hotel room was "she doesn't like me." Those words from a tiny 3-year-old should tell you all you need to know.
I spoke to Sitterwise a few days after our experience and explained all of this to Stacy. While I appreciate that she refunded the extra hours I was charged, there was really no attempt to make this right, beyond promising a better pairing next time I'm in San Diego. It would have gone a long way for them to admit the sitter matching clearly wasn't right, or maybe waive some or all of their fees. Instead, I was simply told that she was an experienced sitter, that they'd follow up on the issue, and that they were sorry.
Toddlers can be real a-holes sometimes, and mine are no exception to this fact. But, they are also well-behaved kids who have NEVER had an issue like this with a caregiver. As someone who spent 15 years as a nanny myself, this was very clearly an issue of a sitter inexperienced with this age group, and a business unwilling to own their mistake.