Dimitra K.

She has a natural way with kids, and ours both took to her immediately. Her references were strong and we were pleased to hire her. Imagine my surprise when she failed to show up to pick up my 5yo daughter at school or meet my 7yo son at his bus stop. She didn't reply to my text checking to make sure pick up was smooth, so I became a bit concerned and went to my son's bus stop, hoping to find her and my daughter. As my son got off bus, I called my daughter's school, where she had never been picked up. I tried Dimitra again. VM again. Worried something had happened or she’d misunderstood the start date, I called her family’s restaurant later that eve to see if she was alright. Her sister, after a long pause, said, "I am SO sorry. Are your children OK?" She said she was unaware of anything having happened to Dimitra but would pass the message on to their father. "I hope she makes this right somehow," she said. The next day Dimitra emailed that she'd fallen at her family’s restaurant, gone to the hospital, and had a herniated disk. Without her phone, she said she couldn’t reach me. She recommended we find a replacement. I sent an email expressing sympathy for her injury but wondering why she didn’t at least call my daughter’s school, whose name she knew and had visited. While I hoped a similar situation would never arise, I needed her to know that we had been relying on her. I shudder to think what might had happened if I hadn’t been able to intercept my son at the bus. Someone has always met him; he would have no idea what to do. In response, she confessed to lying about the injury but offered an irrational assessment of our parenting skills and home as inadequate as justification. Rather than just say she didn’t want the gig, she instead pledged to be responsible for the safe pick up of our children, only to then not show, not respond to calls, and brazenly lie about a fictitious injury/hospitalization. If you are considering this babysitter, I urge you to rethink.