PARENTAL HEADACHE NO. 3 : Long-Winded Baby-Sitter Chats Up a Big Phone Bill

For two years, Patrick Lane Hughes was cared for in an arrangement that worked beautifully for everyone: A college-age cousin began coming to his home when he was 7 weeks old, and his mother, Patsy Lane, was able to return to work without the pain and guilt that pricks the hearts of many working parents.

But the cousin finished college and moved on. And that was when the day-care nightmare began for Lane and her husband, Louis Hughes.

“We advertised for someone in the paper,” said Lane, child-care coordinator for the city of Los Angeles. They hired a vocational nurse. “Because she was new to this country, from Australia or England, she didn’t have any local references. And I couldn’t call the people whose twins she was caring for because she didn’t want them to know she was leaving. She had some kind of certificate, though.”

Big mistake.

“It was curious because we’d call home to check on my son, and the phone would be busy,” said Lane. “And she would always say, ‘Ah, I’m sorry! I left the phone off the hook when Patrick was sleeping.’ ”

Which was true; the phone had been off the hook. But that was because the baby-sitter was spending nearly half her nine-hour day chatting to Australia and England. When the $700 phone bill arrived, the baby-sitter departed.

“Most people have horror stories like this,” said Lane, whose son is now in elementary school. “I wouldn’t change having my son for anything. But finding day care is pretty difficult, and most parents have tried a little bit of everything.”