Fitness star Steph Claire Smith has made a frank admission about secretly “spying” on her unsuspecting babysitters via the baby monitor.
The 28-year-old, from Melbourne, said she would “check in” on her one-year-old son Harvey through the camera when she’s away at work.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Steph’s babysitting confession.
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“I don’t watch the whole time. If it’s the babysitter’s first time, I will, I will watch,” Steph said in an episode of her KICPOD podcast with her co-host Laura Henshaw.
Speaking to 7Life, the co-founder of Keep it Cleaner (KIC) wanted to shed light on the situation.
“I do not ‘spy’. That was a poor choice of words on my end – Laura and I were joking on the podcast,” Steph tells 7Life.
“I have complete trust in those who are looking after Harvey – which is mostly my husband or my mum, sometimes my best friends, and I will check-in because I miss him while I am at work.
“Running KIC and being a working mum is hard. I sometimes don’t get the luxury to work from home and this means missing bedtimes. Being able to tune in on the monitor means I can somewhat be as present as possible in Harvey’s life.”
During the discussion this week, Steph admitted she ended up using the baby monitor’s microphone to talk to the babysitters if she overheard a conversation she didn’t agree with.
Laura shared an example where Steph had chimed in after she noticed something wasn’t right.
“You had some friends babysitting Harvey and they were talking about putting him in a small baby suit and you were listening, which I’m assuming they wouldn’t know you were listening?” Laura said.
Steph responded, “They didn’t know (I was listening). The (suit) was too small for him.
“I think I ended up using the microphone on the baby monitor. I was like, ‘I’m sorry guys’.”
Laura couldn’t help but laugh, before asking Steph: “Are you like Big Brother?”
The young mum said she also “spies” on her husband Josh Miller whenever she’s out.
“I love it,” she said.
Steph later told followers her family and friends know she does not actually “spy” on anyone.
“I check in. Mainly because I miss Harvey and I’m envious,” she says.
She joked: “No one’s gonna wanna babysit anymore.”
During a segment on The Morning Show, Kylie Gillies and co-host Larry Emdur talked about the “nanny-cam” confession with Melissa Wilson, the host of The Juggling Act podcast, and Hit105 radio host Stav Davidson.
“I think if you don’t trust the people who are looking after your children, don’t go out. Stay home and look after them yourself,” said Melissa, a mum of two.
“If someone did that to me, like if I’m looking after someone’s kids and a voice came over a microphone, that would be the very last time I would be looking after their kids.
“It’s complicated, I think, when you leave your child for the first time.
“But you have to reach a stage where you’ve got to walk away and take a break, and trust the people are going to do the right thing.”
Stav weighed in with an amusing explanation.
“If you’ve hired a babysitter and you’re out for a night, then all you’re doing is spending the whole night watching the babysitter, you’re just babysitting anyway,” he said.
“It’s like when you get Uber Eats and then you just watch the car come in on the maps, you may as well just driven and picked it up yourself.
“Why bother in the first place?”
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