There is a sacred, unwritten code among babysitters, grandparents, and daycare workers that is more important than the Magna Carta. It is the law of the “Firsts.” If a baby takes their first step, says their first word, or solves their first quadratic equation while the parents are not in the room, you did not see it. You take that secret to your grave. You smile, you nod, and you let the parents discover that milestone for themselves later so they can have the joy of the moment.
However, one man on Reddit apparently missed the memo on basic childcare etiquette. He didn’t just accidentally witness a milestone. He engineered it. He decided to treat his friend’s toddler like a science experiment while the parents were out on a date night, and now he is wondering why the mom isn’t sending him a thank you card for stealing a core memory from her.
Our narrator is a guy who has been friends with the father since kindergarten. He is close enough to the family that he pops over often and occasionally babysits the couple’s toddler daughter so they can get some much needed alone time. It sounds like a great arrangement on paper. You get a free babysitter you trust, and he gets to hang out with a cute kid. Everyone wins, right?
Well, everyone wins until the babysitter decides to play God with the developmental timeline. The OP knew that the parents had been trying to get their daughter to take her first steps. Instead of letting them handle it, he read about a “trick” online. Apparently, if you give a toddler something to hold, they are more likely to walk without holding onto furniture. So, curiosity got the better of him. He handed the kid a toy, pulled out his phone, and directed his own little movie.
The trick worked. The baby walked. And instead of panicking and deleting the footage like a good friend would, he sent the video directly to the parents while they were out. He essentially live-streamed the moment they had been waiting months for, rubbing it in their faces that he was there and they were not.
The dad’s reaction was pretty chill, which honestly tracks for a lot of dads in these stories. He was just happy she was walking. But the mom? The mom was absolutely livid. And she has every right to be. She didn’t just miss the moment because of bad timing. She missed the moment because her husband’s friend decided to force the issue while she was away.
She feels like he robbed her of a key moment, and that is because he absolutely did. There is a massive difference between a baby spontaneously walking across the room and an adult actively coaching them into it just to see if they can. One is an accident. The other is a hijacking.
The OP claims he had “no malicious intent,” and I believe him. He probably thought he was being helpful or clever. But intent doesn’t really matter when the impact is that a mother is crying because she missed her daughter’s first steps. He treated the baby like a party trick instead of a human being with parents who desperately wanted to be there for the big stuff.
He admits he doesn’t have a deep relationship with the wife, which makes this even more awkward. He crossed a massive boundary with someone he barely connects with. Now she has to look at him every time he comes over and remember that he is the one who saw her baby walk first.
So is he the ahole? Yes. A thousand times yes. You do not force milestones when the parents are not home. And if you do accidentally trigger one, you pretend it never happened. You lie. You lie your face off. You tell them she just sat there eating crackers until they got home. That is the price of admission for being in the village.
NTA the mother overreacted and they’ll be lots of first mother and father will see my kid walked at the babysitter