My Babysitter’s Phone Was Unlocked and I Wish I’d Never Picked It Up

Am I the asshole for going through my babysitter’s phone while she was in the bathroom?

I (27F) am raising my son Cody alone – he’s four years old and his dad has been out of the picture since before he was born. I work two jobs and I’ve been saving for two years to get us into a better apartment. Cody is literally the only thing I’m keeping it together for.

I hired Danielle (22F) through a neighborhood app about five months ago. She had references, a clean background check, I called two of the families she’d worked for. Everything checked out. Cody seemed to like her fine – he’d run to the door when she showed up, he’d tell me about the cartoons they watched. Normal stuff. I thought I’d finally caught a break.

About three weeks ago, Cody stopped wanting me to leave for work. Not just clingy – SCREAMING. Full meltdown, grabbing my jacket, begging me not to go. I figured it was a phase. Four-year-olds do that. But then he started wetting the bed again after eight months of being dry. And last Tuesday he told me he didn’t want to eat his mac and cheese because “Danielle says I have to stay in my room when she has company.”

Company.

I asked him what he meant and he said, “the man who smells like cigarettes.”

I didn’t say anything to Danielle right away. I needed to think. She showed up Wednesday like normal, and I told her I forgot something upstairs and I’d be right back. Her phone was on the kitchen counter. I’m not proud of it. I picked it up.

It wasn’t locked.

I scrolled to her texts and found a thread with someone named “D.” I opened it and started reading from the top, and my hands started shaking so bad I almost dropped it.

What Was In Those Texts

“D” was a guy. That much was obvious fast. The thread went back about three months, which meant it started maybe six or seven weeks after Danielle had been watching Cody.

The first few messages were normal enough. Plans. Inside jokes. Whatever. But then I found what I was looking for and I genuinely wish I hadn’t.

bring him when you watch the kid tomorrow. she never comes home early

Danielle had replied with a laughing emoji. Then: she works until 8 she’s so desperate lol

I stood there in my own kitchen holding this girl’s phone and I read that sentence four times.

she’s so desperate lol

My face went hot. Not the crying kind of hot. The other kind.

I kept scrolling. “D” had been at my apartment at least six times that I could count from the thread. Probably more, because some messages just said on my way with no context. He’d been there when Cody was there. Cody had been put in his room, told to stay, while this man I’d never met sat in my living room. My four-year-old had been managed like a problem so Danielle could have her boyfriend over on my couch, on my time, in my home.

There was one message that made my stomach drop completely.

Danielle had sent it on a Sunday, two weeks ago. It said: he’s so annoying today. keep whining for his mom. i told him she’s not coming and he needs to stop.

“He’s so annoying.”

Cody. She was talking about Cody.

The Next Three Minutes

I heard the bathroom door open.

I put the phone back on the counter exactly where it had been. Facedown. I moved to the other side of the kitchen and I started opening and closing a cabinet like I was looking for something. My heart was going so fast I could feel it in my ears.

Danielle walked in and said “you find what you were looking for?”

And I said yes.

I don’t know how I did it. I am not a calm person. I cry at commercials. I once cried in a Target because a stranger complimented Cody’s shoes and I was just tired and it caught me off guard. But I stood in that kitchen and I looked at this girl who had called my son annoying and let some man into our home and told Cody she wasn’t coming, she’s not coming, stop crying – and I said yes, I found it, thanks.

Then I said I actually had to bring Cody with me tonight, family thing came up, so she could head out.

She looked a little annoyed. Asked if she’d still get paid for the full shift. I said yes and I handed her cash and I watched her leave.

I locked the door.

Cody was on the couch watching something. He looked up at me and I just went and sat next to him and pulled him into my lap and he let me, which he doesn’t always because he’s four and he has opinions about things. I held onto him for a while. He smelled like the strawberry shampoo I’d used that morning.

I didn’t cry until he fell asleep.

The Part Where I Questioned Everything

Here’s what I kept coming back to that night, after Cody was in bed and I was sitting on the kitchen floor for some reason, back against the cabinet, scrolling through my own phone like it was going to give me answers.

I had done everything right.

Background check. References. Two phone calls to real families. I’d been careful in a way that I can’t always afford to be, because being careful takes time and time is the one thing I never have enough of. I’d built this whole system, this whole fragile scaffolding of work and childcare and saving and holding it together, and I had checked the boxes. And it still went wrong.

The bed-wetting had started at the end of October. I remember because I’d just bought Cody new sheets, the ones with the little trucks on them, and I’d had to wash them twice in one week. I’d thought maybe he was getting sick. I’d checked him for a fever. I’d asked him if anything hurt.

He’d said no.

He’d said no because he’s four and he didn’t have the words for “the man who smells like cigarettes comes over and Danielle puts me in my room and tells me to stop crying for you.”

That’s the part that gets me. He was trying to tell me. Not in words, because he didn’t have them. But he was telling me.

What I Did Next

I called out of my Thursday shift. First time in fourteen months.

I spent the morning on the phone. I called the neighborhood app Danielle was listed on and reported what I’d found. The woman I spoke to was polite and took notes and said they’d look into it. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if it means anything.

I texted Danielle that I wouldn’t be needing her anymore. She replied asking why. I told her I’d read her messages with D. She didn’t respond for about two hours and then she sent back: you went through my phone that’s actually illegal

It’s not illegal. I looked it up.

She sent two more messages after that, one saying she was going to tell everyone on the app what I’d done and one that just said whatever your kid is a brat anyway

I screenshotted all of it. Then I blocked her.

I called both of the families whose numbers she’d given me as references. One of them didn’t answer. The other one, a woman named Carol who had two kids under six, picked up on the second ring. I told her what I’d found. There was a long pause and then Carol said, very quietly, “her boyfriend was there?”

Yeah.

Carol said she’d had a feeling something was off. Her younger one had gone through a rough patch around the same time they’d stopped using Danielle. She’d assumed it was developmental. We stayed on the phone for almost an hour.

The Actual Question

So. Am I the asshole?

Here’s the thing. I know what I did. I picked up someone’s private phone and I read their messages without asking. That’s not nothing. I’ve seen enough of these posts to know that privacy matters and that going through someone’s phone is a line, even when you think you have a reason.

But Cody had stopped eating his dinner. He was wetting the bed again after eight months. He was screaming when I left, grabbing my jacket with both hands, and I hadn’t understood why.

I understood why now.

The references were real. The background check was clean. There was nothing on paper that would have told me this girl would bring a strange man into my apartment and shove my kid in his room and text her boyfriend about how desperate I am while Cody cried for me twenty feet away.

The phone told me. The unlocked, facedown, sitting-right-there phone.

I think about the version of me that didn’t pick it up. That went back downstairs and handed Danielle my kid and drove to work and clocked in and spent eight hours not knowing. I think about Cody being put in his room again. Being told to stop. Being told I wasn’t coming.

I can’t get there from here. I can’t figure out how that version of events is better.

Where We Are Now

It’s been three weeks since that Wednesday. I found a new sitter through a coworker, a woman named Pat who is 58 and has watched kids for twenty years and who Cody already calls “Miss Pat” like it’s been forever. He doesn’t scream when I leave anymore. He said goodbye to me yesterday and went right back to the puzzle they were doing without looking up.

The bed-wetting has stopped.

I’m still on the kitchen floor sometimes, metaphorically. Still working two jobs. Still saving. The apartment fund took a small hit from the week I scrambled to find coverage, but it’ll recover. We’ll recover.

Cody doesn’t remember Danielle. Or if he does, he hasn’t mentioned her. Kids that age are like that. They let things go in a way that I genuinely envy.

I’m still angry. Not the hot kind anymore. The low, slow kind that just sits there under everything and probably will for a while.

she’s so desperate lol

Yeah. I’m desperate. I’m a single mom working two jobs trying to keep my kid safe and get us somewhere better. Desperate is another word for trying. I’ll take it.

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