agonyaunt | Dear Prudence: alcohol and childcare

Dear Prudence: alcohol and childcare

Dear Prudence,

My parents are coming to town this week and I’m already losing sleep. When my son was 6 months old (he’s 3 now) my parents watched him for a couple of hours. When we returned we noticed five beer bottles in the recycling and some used wine glasses. If this had been a regular babysitter I would have fired them, but they are my parents. Since then I haven’t let them babysit together or at night, but they always offer. I’ve told my mom about my reluctance about a year ago and got an “I understand” but no apology. I’m still mad that they could be so reckless. Do I need to get over this and let them babysit or is it worth another try explaining my hesitation for free babysitting?

—Should I Let My Parents Babysit?

One of the glories of adult life is the realization that we never have to simply “get over something” merely for the sake of getting over something. That’s not to encourage you to hold permanent grudges, mind you, but you don’t have to suddenly become comfortable with the idea of your parents finishing off a six-pack and a bottle of wine while looking after your infant son just because some time has passed. You don’t mention that your parents have a history of alcohol abuse, so if it seemed like a one-off episode of bad judgment, it may be worth having a follow-up conversation before deciding whether to keep them off the babysitting roster permanently. Tell them you don’t want them to drink alcohol while babysitting your son, and that it particularly disturbed you to find they’d drank rather heavily—not just a beer or two apiece—the last time you put him in their care. If their response is open and apologetic, and you think they’re capable of trying again sober, consider giving them another (briefer, lower-stakes) try at babysitting. Your son is presumably walking around and babbling now, and so they may find it more natural (and more demanding) to engage with him instead of having a drink. If they seem evasive or defensive or unable to promise to wait to imbibe until after you get home, well—free babysitting isn’t worth that sort of headache.

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I posted this because of a recent Prudie entry in this community in which I felt Mallory O. (new Prudie) failed to emphasize the LW's responsibility to his/her child. I think that happened again. I agree with the essential part of Mallory's advice, but I'm unhappy that she doesn't say explicitly that the grandparents' feelings, and even the LW's feelings, are of little importance next to the safety of the child. I didn't always agree with Emily Y. (old Prudie), but she never failed to defend children.

Mallory's advice doesn't make clear what a danger it is to a child for his/her caregivers to be intoxicated. If something were to happen, who would drive the child to the hospital? I would be very hesitant before giving the grandparents a second chance. I'm no tee-totaler. (I disliked Emily's attitude toward alcohol.) I enjoy drinking a few glasses of wine or gin-and-tonics, but I would never touch the stuff if I were the only adult at home with my (or any) kids.

This struck me as well when I read the column. Thank you for pointing it out.

I think that's kind of irrelevant to the LW's question and a lot of what bugged me about old Prudie--taking opportunities to moralize rather than answering the questions asked.

I agree that Emily moralized, but I also appreciated that she tried to create frameworks for her responses. I didn't always agree with them, but I usually found them relevant. I think articulating the priorities in the LW's circumstance would be relevant and helpful as well.

My negative impression of Mallory's response is well captured by her final sentence: "If they seem evasive or defensive or unable to promise to wait to imbibe until after you get home, well—free babysitting isn’t worth that sort of headache." This isn't—or shouldn't be—about how much or how little it worries the LW. How about, free babysitting isn't worth the reckless endangering of a child's life?

Well, that would certainly be more dramatic.

I think that the question of whether a few beers (5, between 2 people) is "too intoxicated" to care for a sleeping infant is one that probably has different answers for different people. I think the parents get to make this call.

(Also it might be that one person drank 5 beers, and the other person didn't drink at all, which I would hope you could find out by asking)

I think it's a good point, although the, "who would drive the child" is always, for me, a problematic example. I mean, I got left home with kids long before I had my driver's license, and I know parents who don't drive. And while it's been a long time since I had more than one drink in a sitting, I've taken migraine remedies that leave me pretty unfit to drive. OTOH, I've never, when I was left solely alone with any child, including mine, taken anything that left me unable to respond to a crisis in a reasonable, thoughtful manner.

Right, and we don't know where the parents live--if they're in a city, cabs or transit might be the easiest way to the emergency room even if they do drive.

You're right, driving is not the best example. Sorry about that.

Oh, is cool. It's a very common example, and this was the first time I actually thought about it.

I find it interesting that in the letter, it's:
five beer bottles in the recycling and some used wine glasses
and in the response, it's:
finishing off a six-pack and a bottle of wine.

Specifically, the bottle of wine. There's no mention of a wine bottle in the recycling - just some used wine glasses. As someone who would quite happily drink water, juice, or soft drink out of wine glasses, I'm wondering if they maybe used the wine glasses to drink the beer...

That was my assumption, as well (that the beer had been drunk from the wine glasses).

*tiiiilts head*

Fatigue causes worse impairment than alcohol - are sleep-deprived parents now a reckless danger to their children's lives? Because I mean, if so, wow is everyone fucked.

nb: no, I do not endorse actual dangerous levels of intoxication when caring for children. I am, however, more than a little bemused at the sense that OH MY GOD THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD!!! especially with the odd impression given by the citation of "five bottles" and "couple of wineglasses", especially given the bit about having talked to the parents about it (telling them why they aren't allowed to babysit): you'd think if there'd been discussion (and there SHOULD have been discussion) that the LW would actually know how many drinks her parents had. Were the glasses of wine in ADDITION to the beer or did they drink the beer out of the glasses (something I totally do)? Two dirty glasses give you exactly no info on how much wine they had, other than they had some. Did all the beer get drunk, or was some spilled?

If they drank the beer out of the wine-glasses, that's at most two and a half beers each. Maybe one of them overimbibed (four beers and a glass of wine) while one was still comfortably within limits.

Other things that are actually a factor: what is a "couple of hours"? Was the child awake, or had they been put to sleep? I'm still legal to drive after two beers of normal alcohol level; my relatives (men over six feet) are still legal at three. If one drank three beers and the other had two and the kid was down for the night . . . *palms up shrug* This? Is not the end of the world. You are actually just as impaired as two beers after you've taken certain antihistamines, cold medicines, or gravol/dramamine, let alone the above-mentioned comparison of fatigue vs alcohol in terms of impairment.

Because I'm really noooot cool to sign on to a level of OMG ALCOHOL DEVIL WHAT IS WORLD COMING TO that insists that two beers makes an adult a Life Threatening Incompetent, because a) that's silly, and b) it's also anti-intoxicant pathologising very normal behaviour (people have a couple beers at a BBQ with their kids around all the time), and c) again, that's silly. Indeed, I kinda feel like Mallory HAD to bump the description up to "finishing off a six-pack and a bottle of wine" because that's what it takes to make the potential imbibing CLEARLY beyond the limits of reason.

So with that in mind I would find a big emphasis on DANGER TO CHILDREN OMG out of place and off-putting. That's not what this is about. The LW isn't even asking "should she allow the grandparents to babysit" - she's asking about whether or not she should just get over it or whether she should try explaining again the whys. (LW seems very clear on the decision not to TAKE the babysitting.)

I honestly agree strongly with

likeaduck: it'd strike hard as yet another decision to Moralize At Length about something with the excuse of it being sort of the same topic as the letter, which is the least pleasant agony aunt tendency, to me.

The LW talked to the grandmother (LW's mother) about the incident. Had the grandparents just used the wine glasses to drink the beer or otherwise drank less than the LW is assuming, the grandmother had an opportunity to say so. I'm just taking the LW's word for it that the grandparents drank too much, but of course I concede that the LW may be wrong in that judgment. I agree with you that two adults drinking five beers over the span of a few hours is not a problem.

The LW asks, "Do I need to get over this and let them babysit...?" (emphasis mine), so I don't agree that the LW has already decided not to let them babysit again. S/he is asking just that.

Edited 2016-09-06 15:28 (UTC)

Huuuh! My apologies - I swear I did read that sentence like six times, because I was TRYING to determine that, but somehow my eyes skipped or my brain did. (It's been a long weekend full of frantic work on renos, I am not at my best.) In which case I adjust my response to, I'm . . .not AGAINST, but not really impressed with any of Mallory's answer? - it feels like it spends a lot of time skating around the point (do you believe your parents dangerously imbibed while looking after your child? then the answer is simple, totally; are you unsure if it was really that bad? figure that out) with a lot of words and considerations that only tangentially apply.

I'm still not sure that it's the place for a sermon on Dangers Of Drinking Around Kids, but it is an issue of: okay look, as a parent, IF you believe your parents drank to a dangerous level last time they were looking after your kids, then there isn't a question here. If you're not sure, then you need to hash THAT part out.

In re drinking too much - the citation just seemed very weird, especially without a note of "and when I confronted them they confirmed [this much drinking]" - using BUT THERE WERE THIS MANY THINGS IN THE GARBAGE CAN/THIS MANY DIRTY GLASSES, for me, pings with a note of "and see I can PROVE they were drinking too much because THESE WERE THE TRACES!!!" I may be sensitized to this due to having had to deal with that kind of situation too much in my life (not necessarily over alcohol, but just that kind of thing in general) - not even always on the same side.

Like, I have had to deal both with people who went "well I only had ONE" and were then unable to explain the six pack of empties, but also the person who was like BUT THERE ARE FIVE EMPTY ONES IN THE SINK while I was like " . . . yes, and like I said, one got spilled, and two people split the other four over the course of four hours." (Sticking with drinks as an example just to make things easier, tho the topics were broader).

So that just ends up being the kind of thing that makes me go " . . .okay, what is going on here that isn't straightforward?" and since we seemed to have the "wow they drank a LOT that's AWFUL" end covered I ended up wondering but, like: five beers and a glass of wine each is only seven drinks, which is only three and a half each, which is . . . not that much, over the course of a whole evening?

. . .sorry again for totally missing that one bit of the sentence tho. I got nothin'; my brain glitched. (Speaking of fatigue and impairment . . . )

I interpreted "a couple of hours" to mean two hours, in which case I think 3-4 drinks each is over the line. But I agree that the LW is vague about how much each grandparent actually drank, and that could be problematic in the ways you mentioned. I was annoyed that Mallory failed to structure her response around the child's well-being, so I didn't think too hard about what else she missed. I'm also not really against anything she said, but she doesn't zero-in on the important points.

I am well acquainted with parenting while fatigued. Unfortunately, parenting is fatiguing, so sometimes there's just nothing to be done about that. In a crisis, hopefully adrenaline would kick in!

Yeah I'm used to "a couple of hours" being anything from 2 to 4, and don't know how the LW would use it personally. Because yeah it does make a big difference if we're talking four drinks in two hours, or three in four!

Fatigue is a bastard that way. Apparently there's a regular seven percent increase in traffic collisions every year when the time change means people lose an hour!

I think it's reasonable to set a new house rule like, "no drinking at all when caring for my child," and check that parents or any other potential babysitter agree to that. The LW can do that, and it doesn't matter if their caution is necessary or excessive. It's their caution and their kid. (Personally, I don't allow any alcohol in my home at all, ever, and I don't care if it's reasonable.)

I suspect the grandmother thought she was hearing a new house rule and said she understood was as good as agreeing to abide by it...this ought to be discussed more explicitly.

I think it's also reasonable for adults to have a few drinks when caring for a child. Parents do. Parents also get sleepy, and do other things that impair their reflexes too much to drive.

The letter writer is not just asking "Should I let my parents babysit?" They are also saying, "I didn't think their drinking was reasonable and it made me angry," and asking, "Is my anger justified?" That's why the beer bottles in the trash matter--they're evidence that the drinking was really bad and therefore the anger was justified. "Ok, I'll follow the new house rule if you want" doesn't do anything about the anger.

Yes, this. Whether babysitters can drink is up to the parents, not the babysitters. Whether drinking is something caregivers are allowed to do is up to the parents, not the advice columnists, unless you hit a legal child endangerment situation. 5 beer bottles over 2-3 hours drunk by 1 or 2 people is not enough data to know if that's unsafe drinking. What's their tolerance like? Who drank more of it? Had they eaten? Are they generally responsible caregivers?

I was a 14 year old baby sitter of infants, and I have never been so drunk as an adult that my judgment was as impaired by alcohol as it was by being sober and 14.

I think the LW is in the wrong for having expected her parents to behave in the same way as paid babysitters – I think that’s a strange expectation. I entirely agree that I would not expect a paid babysitter to drink alcohol but I don’t think she should have assumed that the same applied to her parents.

I think what comes across to me as strange here is the way that this seems to have come as a total surprise to the LW. I would have expected her to know whether or not her parents regularly drink in the evenings and how they would likely handle babysitting. So, I know that my parents are basically teetotal but that they are both completely lacking in knowledge of how to take care of babies (my grandmother looked after me as a baby and I’m an only child). I also know that my in-laws are perfectly baby-competent (having raised four) but that they routinely drink quite heavily in the evenings. If I decided to take either my parents or my PIL up on an offer to babysit, I know what to expect – I know that my parents would not cope well at all if the baby woke up and that my in-laws would cope fine but would have drunk several glasses of wine over the course of the evening. I would make my decision based on that information.

If the parents keep offering to babysit, I think there’s no harm in the LW saying that she’s only comfortable with it if they don’t drink alcohol but I don’t think it’s reasonable for her to expect an apology for her parents’ “recklessness” previously as she didn’t make her expectations clear and (unless this was highly unusual behaviour for them) she should have known her parents’ drinking habits

Yes, that occurred to me too. It seems like the "five beer bottles" was a surprise - was the LW upset that her parents drank her beer? Did they not drink when she was a child, and so she thought that was because children were around, not because of some other reason? (It was too expensive, one or both of them was on medication that precluded it...) Or was she just upset because she would (quite reasonably) expect a paid babysitter not to drink, and didn't realize she needed to spell that out for her parents? (Not to mention that paid babysitters are not infrequently below the legal drinking age, in the US! Even a college student might be under 21, and babysitters in my experience are very often high schoolers.)

(Also, "finishing off a six-pack" in Prudie's answer felt really weird. What if the LW's parents bought the beer and took the other one home with them, or perhaps, thoughtfully, left it in LW's fridge? Five of six isn't finishing off a thing, it's either taking almost all of a thing, or not finishing it!)

(Also also, if I were babysitting an infant, I'd be more likely to have one beer than if I were babysitting a toddler, but not because the toddler's more entertaining to me - the toddler's also more likely to try to drink my beer.)

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