When is too old to still have a babysitter?

G. thanks.

if you dont mind me asking, how old are you and your brother? how old were you guys when you first started babysitting him? did you carry like carrying him too? did he like it? you said he "came to terms with it" did he like it or was he just ok with it? with my brother i can clearly see that he genuinely liked it when i took care of him

Lyza might not care for tommy as much as you cared for your brother when you were younger. i can say with 100% certainty that i care much more about my own older brother than the other boys i babysit. im sure she does care for him though(we always do) but can you be sure that tommy feels that way? when i started babysitting other boys i didnt really know what i was doing. when i did those playful things some of them thought i was taunting them. its good to hear that he already likes being carried, he was an angel after hearing that, wasnt he? it is also good that he openly jumped into her arms for protection. that means he is probably seeing the caring side of her now.

i dont want to comment on the interaction between him and lyzas sister just yet before hearing the full story. but because tommy is weaker than most people, it makes even more sense that he responds to positivity rather than hard scoldings. the boys who are arrogant and wanna be "manly" need more of a strict approach. for example, there was this one boy who was almost as strong as me and very very arrogant. he gave me 2 bruises and i had to spank him 8 separate times before he even started coming under control. another example is my brother. not weak but not too arrogant either which is why i scold him when he does something really stupid, and just talk to him comfortingly when its less stupid. it was much easier to knock some sense into him, i think ive only ever spanked him around 3 times. so yeah try telling lyza to be a bit less harsh on him, as you might remember from your brother's time its really hard on the poor boys as well.

My brother is 4 years older than me. He was extremely immature and badly behaved as a preteen and teen and raised hell when our parents weren't around, and none of the people they hired to watch him could manage to restrain him. Then one day when I was 8 or 9 and he was 13 he announced that he'd been armwrestling with his friends at school and he wanted to do it against me now. In those days it was assumed that boys are stronger than girls, especially younger ones, so even though I was very active and athletic and my brother wasn't we both assumed he'd win easily. So we were both shocked when the opposite happened, I beat him with hardly any effort. At first I thought he was playing a joke on me, but after a bunch of other tests we both realized that I was far, far stronger than him. That changed our relationship pretty fast. I remember dragging him behind me to show our mom what I had discovered, she was shocked too but clearly it gave her an idea. A bit later she told us that she wasn't hiring a babysitter for my brother anymore (I never needed one), and that I was going to be his babysitter when our parents were out. He was appalled at this and that first day he was extremely rebellious, and the only way I could get him in order was a lot of spankings. It was really the only option I had, for someone like he was at the time. It took a couple years but gradually I wore him down to acceptance, and then he started genuinely liking it. By the time he was 15 he was very well behaved and we were closer than ever, he actually got excited when our parents were taking a trip and he'd get to spend a couple days having fun with his 11-year-old "big sister" taking care of him. His favorite part was that he could sleep in my bed when I was babysitting him, whereas normally he had to sleep in his own room. His other favorite part was being carried, he loved that too. I really think all boys do, once they shed the embarrassment anyway. I used it as a reward, he liked being held above my head so he could pretend he was flying, or just being carried on my hip as I did normal stuff.

I can see the same kind of transition happening to Tommy as it did to my brother, turning from a bratty rebellious boy into a cute and well-behaved one. He definitely takes after him when it comes to being carried, it's only in the last couple months he started asking for it. Yeah, he was so determined to be good and do a good job with the dishes after that promise, and he got a front-carry and a piggyback ride for it! He definitely associates her with safety as well, he'd be too scared to go outside because of those damn bullies if he wasn't with her or another girl. Actually all of Lyza's friends and girls their age tend to find him adorable and they're all very protective of him, he can run to one of them whenever someone's giving him trouble.

There isn't much to the full story with Tommy and Lyza's sister. Shortly after I was him armwrestle the 6-year-old boy I was dropping Tommy at Lyza's house, and her sister was there. As an experiment I asked her if she knew how to armwrestle, then I told Tommy to go try her. I think he was curious too because he didn't seem to mind, and he wasn't embarrassed when she slammed his hand down almost instantly. He was impressed even, he asked to feel her biceps and try again with both hands. I left the room for a bit, and when I came back Tommy and Lyza's sister were play-wrestling, and she had him twisted around pinned on the floor. Lyza had to pull her off and tell her to be more gentle. They played with each other some more after I left, under Lyza's supervision, and everything was fine.

Lyza definitely has a caring side, I wouldn't hire her if she didn't. It's a carrot and stick thing. She goes hard on him when she has to and is nice to him the rest of the time.

I'm kinda in the opposite situation from you girls. I'm a 16yo boy and i've got a single dad who's around 36 and two little sisters aged 11 and 7. My sisters babysit me, and they even babysit my dad too. My 11yo sister is basically the head of the family, she sets rules that even my dad has to follow, like curfew and lights-out-time. She handles the money too and makes sure me and my dad are always supervised, usually by her or my other sister. It's actually a really great arrangement, they both take great care of us and things run really smoothly compared to before. Even my dad came around to it. As a guy I can confirm the stuff about how we all enjoy being carried as well, my sisters use that to their advantage a lot.

G. your dad too? are you sure an 11 year old regardless of gender is really skilled enough to well handle money? i can say with full certainly, even i am not at that level.

Oh yeah definitely. My 11yo sister Sarah is basically a genius, we're actually in the same grade. She started 1st grade when she was only 4, and then she skipped 3rd grade, so now she's in 9th grade, 3 years ahead of her age level. I was really sick for months in 4th grade and missed most of it so I had to repeat, which is why I'm in 9th too instead of 10th. Sarah is the smartest in the class by far, and she's sort of the unofficial class leader too, she helps everyone with their homework and people go to her with problems. There was actually talk of her skipping another grade but she wanted to be in the same class as me for a year, she knew how much I'd love it too.

No doubt about it that she's capable of handing the family's money, even my dad agrees now. When he did it he would spend his whole paycheck on stupid stuff and leave us eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches for a week, and it's only thanks to Sarah's insistence that we had any savings left. Since she took over everything's been much better, she has the passwords and the PIN codes and she gives me and our other sister Sabrina and our dad an allowance every week. She does all the paperwork with the bank and the house and everything and just brings it to our dad to sign, he doesn't even know what he's signing.

Since Sarah took over running the household everything just runs way smoother, she has a lot of rules for both of us and she's tough with them but she and Sabrina are very caring as well and we're always happy when we can be good. It's brought me and my dad closer together as well, we're kind of acting a bit more like brothers now.