Babysitters – What’s the going rate?
Although we have an 11 year old, he is certainly not old enough to stay home alone or care for his younger sisters for that matter, so we occasionally get a babysitter. For many years it just didn’t seem like we had any good options other than leave the kids with my parents. Luckily that has changed. We have found 4 wonderful teen sitters that are all very responsible.
Gayla at SuperNanny Rules has a poll going right now on how much you should pay your babysitter. What do you think? What is the going rate in your area?
Also, what are the expectations for baby sitters? When I was a teen, it was expected that if you babysat, you would at least leave the kitchen and living area as clean, if not cleaner, than you found it. Is that still the case? One of our sitters is exceptionally good about this – trust me, it was a nice surprise to come home to a beautifully clean kitchen.
Here are a few more babysitting resources I have come across for parents:
And a few for the teens who take care of our kids while we get some grown up time:
- American Red Cross Babysitter’s Training Course
- More resources for your teen sitter
- Youth Online Club of Canada has even more resources for your teen sitter
My husband and I don’t get out much and when we do I usually have one of my older kids or their girlfriends watch our 3 yr old. Wanting to give them a break as well as ourselves we had our friends niece come over to babysit. My husband was being quite generous in the amount paying her $70 ahead of time. We spent the day out and continued to check in by phone with the sitter. She kept saying everything was fine as the day grew into the dinner hour we called to ok that we stay alittle while longer….fine fine. Come to find out everything was not fine. She left her cell phone at my house, I didn’t mean to me snoopy but, I checked her text msgs…wrong I know but, the texts she was sending to her friends about us and our daughter were even more distasteful stating that we owed her now $100 for babysitting thinking that she was getting paid $10 an hour????? My oldest & middle sons were there with her part of the day and our daughter took a 3 1/2 hour nap for goodness sakes. Plus one of her other texts stated that she was still watching the brat. When my sons girlfriend arrived to take over she said that my 3 yr old was unusally quiet and just wanted to be held. This is NOT my daughter, she is a vibrant 3 yr old. I have not had the chance to try and talk to my 3 yr old but, I do plan on trying to get out of her what happened. Believe me that was the one and only time someone other then family will watch her.