World’s Worst Babysitter Abandons Toddler At Hairdresser And Mother Is Now Fighting For Custody

When you leave your child with a babysitter, you likely have some expectations. Namely, that the babysitter will keep your child safe, clothed, fed, loved and even entertained during the time they are with them. I’m pretty sure that the last thing any parent expects when they leave their child with a babysitter is a battle to retain custody of their own kid.

Sadly, that is exactly what is happening to a young mother in Russia who left her 2-year old daughter with a babysitter in a long-term situation. According to The Daily Mail, Yulia Kouranova, 28, left her daughter Lena with 24-year old Marina Kougadova while Kouranova worked a 6-month contract in the tourism industry. She was unable to take her daughter with her so she hired Kougadova to care for her while she was gone.

One day, the world’s worst babysitter took the little girl with her to a hair salon to get her hair done. When she was finished, she told the salon owner that she needed to go get money from her car to pay and left the child in the salon. She never returned and the salon owner sat with the girl all evening waiting for her. And this is where the story gets incredibly weird because the salon owner kept the girl for TWO WEEKS before calling authorities. The Daily Mail does not provide any explanation for this but the salon owner did eventually contact police and they are currently searching for the babysitter. The mother is now waiting to find out if she can keep her own child because before she had been located, they had begun the process to put the child up for adoption. From the social worker on the case, via The Daily Mail:

‘We immediately tried to find her relatives and to clarify the situation, but it was quickly clear that this wasn’t going to go anywhere.

‘It was only when we put out an appeal through the media including images that the girl’s mother got in touch.

‘This was seen by the girl’s mother originally got in touch and told us she thought the child was safely with the babysitter.

‘She said that she had regularly called the babysitter who had always pretended that the child was well. On the occasions when the mother asked to speak to her, the babysitter always said she was refusing to come to the phone or sleep, which she accepted because of her age.

So this poor mother tried keeping in touch with her child’s caretaker and was repeatedly lied to? I cannot even imagine having to make the choice to leave my kids for six months to take a job elsewhere but I have to think this mother was very desperate. It is easy for me to say I would never do this because I have a big support system including my husband and family and this is quite simply something I will never face. My judgements for her odd decision aside, I cannot believe this mother is now fighting to keep her own child after a horrible babysitter decided to abandon her and an even more horrible (or at least, very strange) hair salon owner decided to house her for two full weeks before attempting to find her family. This is obviously an odd-ball story all the way around but I think being told I cannot keep my kids is among my worst nightmare scenarios so I really feel for this poor woman.

I guess the moral of the story is to be very careful about who you leave your child with for a long-term babysitting stint. You never know who someone really is and six months is a long time to trust another person with your child. As parents, we have to go with our gut and I think after being repeatedly told that my little one could not come to the phone I would begin to grow suspicious. I hope this poor mother has learned her lesson and will have her instincts more finely tuned in the future.

(Image: via The Daily Mail)

You can reach this post’s author, Valerie Williams, on Twitter or via e-mail at mommyishvalerie@gmail.com