should we tell her?? babysitting question

[Rouge]

I would definitely tell her. If you are worried you could have an incentive ie. If she goes to bed and doesn't be silly she can do xyz the next day, or she can have a special breakfast etc And you'll be asking xyz if she was a good girl etc. I think of it from their perspective they think you're going out to have fun without them and at the same time they are probably very excited at the prospect of being babysat. So if there is an incentive for good behaviour for the first few times they start to realise it's no different from any other night. We did this with both DD & DS when they were little, and occasionally if we are doing something out that they feel they will miss out on we'll do it then too.

[Olive]

well we did tell her, she slept the whole night so probably forgot that she was even going to be there!!

[Indadhanu]

LOL good one

[Reyna]

I would tend to go 'in between' here, and tell DD that such-and-such is coming over tonight - and leave it at that. That way if she wakes up, it won't be a total surprise that the friend is there, so she should be okay with it, (and the friend can put her back to bed saying that mummy will be back soon etc) but it's not going to set her up for a bad night (where she perhaps won't want to go to bed, or could wake up just because she knows you aren't there). Just a thought.

EDIT: oops sorry Olive, missed your post saying you'd already told her! Glad it worked out