What How Someone Treats Another Kid When You’re Not Around Tells You: Parenting Tips
Last June, I hosted a backyard BBQ for a handful of mom friends from my kid’s first grade class. By 6 p.m., the ice in our cooler had melted completely, the lemonade was warm, and we were out of hamburger buns. I grabbed my keys and headed out, only to remember 30 seconds down the driveway that I’d left my reusable grocery bag by the back door. I crept back up the steps, pulled the screen door open quietly, and heard a kid crying.
It was Milo, my friend Lila’s 5-year-old son, who’d spent the whole day clinging to Lila’s side because the crowd and the sprinkler noise were overstimulating for him. Lila had wandered to the other end of the yard to say hello to an old neighbor she hadn’t seen in years, so Milo was standing by the picnic table with Jake, Lila’s new boyfriend, who I hadn’t met yet.
Jake was leaning against the table scrolling his phone, not even looking at Milo. “Quit sniffling, you’re fine,” he said. “You’re too old to act like this when your mom steps away. Go run through the sprinkler with the other kids like a normal kid.” Milo mumbled something I couldn’t hear, then asked again for his mom. Jake sighed loudly, shoved his phone in his pocket, and said, “If you don’t go play by yourself right now, I’m going to put you in the car alone until your mom’s ready to leave. You’re not going to ruin my night being a baby.”
I froze in the doorway, holding the doorknob. I didn’t know what to do, so I just grabbed my bag off the counter, backed out quietly, and drove to the store. When I got back 15 minutes later, Jake was standing by the grill smiling, shaking my hand and complimenting my raised garden beds. He asked about my son, told a funny story about playing basketball with his nephew, and seemed completely charming. Lila pulled me aside later to ask what I thought, saying he was great with kids, and I just smiled and changed the subject. I couldn’t stop replaying that 90 seconds I’d witnessed.
That moment drove home a saying I’ve thought about ever since I started working part-time at a local preschool: you don’t truly know a person until you see how they treat someone else’s kid when the parent isn’t around. It’s easy to perform kindness when the person who matters is watching. Charming a parent, playing the part of a great babysitter, being the helpful volunteer for 10 minutes while the teacher is in the room—any of that is just acting when the stakes are low for you. The real test is what you do when no one who cares about that kid is watching, when the kid can’t tell anyone what you said or did, when being kind takes more effort than being dismissive.
I’ve seen this play out a hundred times at school. The dad who volunteers for every field trip and dotes on his own 4-year-old will roll his eyes and walk away when a different kid trips and scrapes their knee, too busy taking photos of his own child to stop. The teen babysitter who posts cute Reels with your kid when you’re still home will sit on the couch scrolling TikTok the whole time you’re gone, ignoring your kid’s requests to play Go Fish. The in-law who swears they love your kids will snap at them for messing up their perfectly set coffee table when you step out to run an errand, and then tell you they were just fine when you get back.
The practical takeaway here isn’t that you need to cut everyone out of your life who has an off day with a kid. We all get tired, we all lose our patience sometimes. But what you’re looking for is the default. When no one is watching, what’s the first thing they do? That’s the part that tells you who they really are.
Over the years, I’ve put together small, low-fuss ways to check this that don’t feel creepy or confrontational. If you’re vetting a new babysitter, after you say goodbye and walk out the door, come back 5 minutes early like you forgot your phone, and knock softly instead of texting ahead. If you’re meeting a new partner a friend or family member is seeing, step out to take a work call halfway through dinner and leave them alone with the kid for 10 minutes. If you’re hiring a new after-school caregiver for your class, tell them you need to run to the office to grab a form, and leave them alone with a small group of kids for 10 minutes to watch through the window.
If the kid is old enough to talk, ask specific questions instead of vague ones. Instead of “was X nice to you?” ask “what did you play when I was gone?” or “did you need help opening your juice box? who helped you?” Kids don’t know to hide the truth about this stuff. If they shrink back and say “we didn’t play anything,” or “X said I had to be quiet,” that’s all the information you need.
A month after that BBQ, Lila pressed me again about what I thought of Jake, and I told her what I’d seen. She was defensive at first, said I caught him on a bad day, he didn’t know how overstimulated Milo gets. But a week later she texted me: she’d done the same thing I did, said she forgot her wallet on a day trip, went back inside, and heard Jake yelling at Milo for coloring on his notebook, calling him a brat. She ended things a few days later. It’s been a year, and she’s still navigating dating as a single mom, which is hard. She still talks about how that moment was a wake-up call, though.
I don’t think this test works for every situation, and it doesn’t give you all the answers. But it’s one of the most honest little checks I know. People will show you who they are, if you just know where to look. That spot, when they think no one who cares about the kid is watching, is almost always where the truth comes out.
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