It was exactly 7:43 PM on a Tuesday, I was wearing a fleece robe that smelled vaguely of sour milk and desperation, and my seven-year-old, Maya, was asking me why the girl on the TV was talking on a phone that had a curly wire attached to the wall. We were about four minutes into the 2020 Netflix reboot of the baby sitters club, and I was already clutching my third lukewarm coffee of the day, completely unprepared for how much a show about middle schoolers was about to mess with my head.
My husband, Dave, was half-asleep on the other end of the couch, occasionally mumbling something about how we needed to take the recycling out. But I was mesmerized. Growing up, I literally devoured the Ann M. Martin books. I wanted to be Claudia Kishi so badly it hurt. But sitting there as a 30-something mother of two, watching this incredibly talented, diverse baby sitters club cast figure out life, my brain completely short-circuited. I suddenly realized that my entire paradigm of what it means to leave my children with another human being was completely, fundamentally flawed.
Before I had kids, I believed that finding someone to baby sit was a transactional, low-stakes arrangement. You call the neighbor’s teenager, hand them a twenty-dollar bill, point to the pizza on the counter, and leave. You just assume they’ll keep the kid alive while watching MTV. But after having Maya, and then Leo who's now four and currently going through a phase where he only eats things that are orange, my reality shifted. Leaving my literal infant with a stranger felt like handing over a vital organ to a passing pedestrian. Anyway, the point is, watching this show didn't just give me 90s nostalgia—it gave me a total complex about my own childcare choices.
Alicia Silverstone is the mom now and I need a physical moment
Can we just stop for a second and acknowledge the absolute violence of casting Alicia Silverstone as Kristy's mom? I almost choked on my coffee. Cher Horowitz is now the exhausted mother trying to wrangle a blended family and deal with a tween who wears a visor indoors. It’s fine. I’m fine. I just needed to look in the mirror and check my forehead for new wrinkles real quick.
But seeing her play Elizabeth Thomas-Brewer actually struck this really vulnerable chord with me. She's just trying to figure it out. And it made me look at the baby sitters themselves—played by these brilliant young actors like Sophie Grace and Momona Tamada—with totally different eyes. When I was a kid, the baby sitters club were my peers. Now? They're the literal children I'm supposed to be trusting with my own literal children. Momona Tamada plays Claudia and holy crap, this kid dresses better than I ever will in my entire life, but underneath the amazing outfits, they're thirteen. Thirteen! I wouldn't trust a thirteen-year-old to water my houseplants right now without a detailed spreadsheet.
And yet, the show portrays them as these hyper-competent, emotionally intelligent miniature adults. Stacey (Shay Rudolph) manages her Type 1 Diabetes with more grace than I manage a slight headache. Dawn is out there fighting for social justice while I’m just trying to remember if I washed Leo's favorite dinosaur shirt. It made me realize that my pre-kid belief—that teens are just lazy and screen-obsessed—is totally unfair, but my post-kid reality of wanting a baby sitter with a master's degree in early childhood development is also completely unhinged.
The toddler fever scene that gave me actual hives
There's this one episode in the first season—episode four, I think, where Mary Anne (Malia Baker) is watching this little girl. Maya was sitting next to me eating popcorn, totally relaxed, while I was progressively sinking deeper into the couch cushions. The little girl spikes a massive fever. Like, a scary, out-of-nowhere toddler fever.
I felt my stomach drop into my slippers. My pediatrician, Dr. Evans, casually mentioned at Leo's six-month checkup that fevers in little babies are super tricky and that anything over like, 104 is when you really need to rush to the ER, or maybe she said if they're acting super lethargic? Honestly, the rules seem to change every time I go in there, and half the time I'm so sleep-deprived I just frantically Google things at 3 AM anyway. But seeing Mary Anne—who's historically the shyest, most anxious character—completely take charge, call 911, and advocate for this kid at the hospital just blew my mind.
It made me look at Dave and say, "Oh god, does our babysitter know what to do if Leo's fever spikes? Does she even know where we keep the thermometer?" Dave just blinked at me and said, "Babe, we don't even know where we keep the thermometer." Which, fair.
It completely shifted my perspective from just wanting a warm body in the house to actually wanting to set our baby sitters up for success. We expect them to handle crises, but we don't give them the tools. I realized I was just waving goodbye and assuming the universe would protect my kids, which is wild when you really think about it.
Stocking the house so a teenager doesn't text you every five minutes
When Leo was a tiny baby, the first time we ever had a non-family member come over to baby sit, I had a minor panic attack. I didn't want the poor girl to have to bounce him on her hip for four hours straight because he was in a super clingy phase. I had just bought the Wooden Baby Gym | Bear and Lama Play Gym Set from Kianao. Dave thought I was totally nuts for ordering a wooden gym from a Swiss brand, but I'm telling you, it was my absolute safety blanket.
I set it up on the rug right before the sitter arrived. There's this little crocheted lama and a bear on it, and because it's wood and cotton, it doesn't light up or play that awful electronic music that makes you want to throw things out a window. It’s genuinely my favorite thing we ever bought for him. I told the sitter, "If he fusses, just put him under the lama. The lama is magic." And it actually worked. I got a text an hour later with a picture of him just happily batting at the little wooden beads. Giving your sitter tools that seriously engage a baby without overstimulating them into a meltdown is like, half the battle.
On the flip side, I also left her with the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Chew Toy because Leo was aggressively cutting his bottom teeth. Look, it’s a teether. It's totally fine. It’s food-grade silicone and the bamboo design is cute, and it's super easy to wash which is great. But Leo gnawed on it for maybe ten minutes, threw it behind the sofa, and spent the rest of the night trying to chew on the sitter's shoelaces instead. It works in a pinch, but babies are gonna baby. You can buy all the cute silicone in the world and sometimes they just want to eat dirt. It's just reality.
Dress them for the blowout
The other thing watching the baby sitters club cast made me think about is how much pressure we put on these kids to figure out our highly specific parenting choices. Claudia Kishi might be able to sew her own clothes, but the 15-year-old from down the street doesn't know how to fasten a complicated six-button linen romper while a baby is screaming like a banshee.
My strategy completely changed. I stopped putting Leo in cute, complicated outfits when we went out. Instead, I started leaving him in the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie. I had like, four of these. They have those little envelope shoulders, which I always awkwardly demonstrated to the babysitter before leaving. I'd be like, "Okay, if he has a massive diaper blowout, DO NOT pull this over his head, you pull it down over his shoulders and legs, okay?" The poor girls always looked at me like I was insane, but I know I saved them from at least one literal shitstorm. Plus, it's 95% organic cotton, so if he got a little sweaty while refusing to nap, his skin didn't break out in that weird red rash he used to get from cheap polyester blends.
You just kind of have to figure out how to make your house idiot-proof, but also teenager-proof, and maybe leave a list of emergency numbers on the counter next to some snacks and just pray that everyone is still breathing when you get home from your two-hour dinner at Olive Garden.
The club we're all secretly trying to join
I think the reason the Netflix show resonated so deeply with me—and why I let Maya watch it even though some of the themes about dating and heavy family stuff are maybe a tiny bit over her head—is that it represents a village. Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, Dawn, Stacey... they show up for each other. They show up for the parents in their town.
Motherhood can be so incredibly isolating. You're sitting in your house, covered in pureed peas, wondering if you're ruining your kid because you let them watch an iPad for an hour so you could wash your hair. Seeing these kids take their jobs so seriously, seeing them care so deeply about the families they work for, it’s like this beautiful fantasy of what community childcare should look like.
It made me stop treating my sitters like interchangeable commodities and start treating them like extensions of our family. I ask about their cross-country meets now. I overpay them, honestly, because paying someone well to keep your most precious cargo safe is just good karma. I don't expect them to be the baby sitters club cast, but I do expect them to care, and in return, I try to be a parent who's genuinely organized enough to leave the thermometer out on the counter.
Anyway, Maya is currently asking me to buy her a clear landline phone off eBay, so I've to go deal with that before she figures out my PayPal password.
The messy questions everyone asks about sitters and screens
Is the Netflix Baby-Sitters Club show seriously okay for a 7-year-old?
Look, I let Maya watch it, but I definitely had to pause it like fifty times to explain things. They talk about periods, they talk about gender identity, there's a transgender character, and they deal with some heavy family trauma like parents abandoning them. I personally loved having those conversations with her because they handle it all so beautifully and normally, but if you aren't ready to explain what pansexual means while eating breakfast cereal, maybe wait until they're 9 or 10 like the ratings suggest.
What age should a baby sitter honestly be?
I used to think 12 was fine because that's when I started. Holy crap, no. Now that I've kids? I don't really want anyone under 15 watching my infant, and even then, I prefer older high schoolers or college kids. But it totally depends on the kid. Some 14-year-olds have taken Red Cross courses and are super mature, and some 18-year-olds spend the whole time making TikToks in your bathroom. You just have to trust your gut and see how they interact with your kid during a trial run.
How do you handle a sitter who doesn't know basic medical stuff?
You teach them, honestly. It's so awkward to be like "hey do you know infant CPR?" because you sound like a crazy paranoid mom, but you just have to swallow your pride and do it. I literally printed out a little cheat sheet of what to do for choking, where the first aid kit is, and the exact dosage of baby Tylenol based on Leo's weight, and I tape it to the fridge. If they think I'm insane, that's fine. I'm.
Do you pay sitters more if they've CPR certification?
Yes. Absolutely. If a teenager took the time on their weekend to go sit in a community center and learn how to save a life, I'm paying them an extra three to five bucks an hour. Take all my money. Just keep my kids breathing.
How do you stop stressing when you finally leave the house?
You don't. I mean, maybe by kid number three you do? I usually spend the first twenty minutes of any date night checking my phone under the table. But eventually, the wine kicks in, or the sheer exhaustion takes over, and you realize that kids are resilient and sitters usually just want to do a good job and eat your expensive snacks. You just have to walk out the door and let it go.
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