Hiring a Babysitter: A Nightmare or a Dream Come True?

Regina Martine
When my I was pregnant with my son, and trying to do some freelance design work at home, a neighbor recommended I hire her sitter as a mother’s helper to watch my girls so I could get some work done. I had her come over and meet the girls to make sure it was the right “fit.” They liked her and I liked her, so I asked her to come two afternoons a week. So twice a week, she painted their toenails and read them stories and took them for walks to the playground and the library. She made brownies with them and splashed with them in the kiddie pool. I could work or run errands or just lie around and stuff the brownies she made into my giant pregnant self. It was great to have someone so wonderful to help out — and to know that I had five kidless hours a week to do with what I pleased. She ended up coming twice a week for a year and a half until she left for college. I begged her not to go. She had spoiled me and I couldn’t do this by myself! I made her promise to find a replacement before she left, which she did. That sitter stayed for a year until she went to college, then she found her replacement before she left. By then my kids were in kindergarten or preschool and I could go on without a mother’s helper. I did miss them, though. It was great to have reliable sitters my kids loved and I could really trust.

I have had really great luck with these babysitters, especially since I have no family in the area so I almost always have to actually pay someone to watch my kids. They were all seniors in high school at the time, they could drive themselves here and home, and were all quite mature and a positive influence on my kids.

Most of the time when my husband and I go out, we either wait until our parents are in town or swap babysitting favors with my good friend — and since I have three kids and she has one I definitely get the better end of that deal. We haven’t used “real” babysitters much since those mother’s helper days. At 8 or 10 dollars an hour for a sitter, on top of the cost of dinner or whatever our date turned out to be, an evening out can get pretty pricey. Instead we have “date night.” We will give the kids dinner and send them to bed a little early where they can read on their own for a while, then we have our own dinner together with wine and grown up conversation. Hopefully by the time the kids want to stay up later, they will be old enough to stay home alone and we can go out on a real date.

Holly DeSouza
I may not be the best person to discuss finding a babysitter with for a very simple (read: pathetic) fact: I rarely go out with my husband without my kid. Very, very rarely.  Like, in 2011 we have been out twice without our daughter and one of those times was to sit in a hospital room while a family member was recovering from multiple surgeries. Yet, this is not a forum to discuss that issue, I realize.  My daughter is only four and I actually like having her around most all of the time. She is a non-sleeper as discussed ad nauseum so we spend a lot of time together and, albeit not always the most exciting activities, she is around me a lot. She’s too young still to be left alone at play dates and only spends time at school when I am at work. At home.  1.2 miles away. 

When I have offsite meetings or find myself in need of a babysitter, I am very particular. I am just starting to feel comfortable at the thought of someone else in charge in my place but, that said, there is a very small group of people I would trust. And 99% of that small group shares my gene pool. 

When the rare situation approaches and I have found myself in a bind, a great resource for babysitters is Lexi’s school. Lexi’s classroom helpers are old enough to hold down a job, have access to a car, but most importantly are familiar with Lexi and Lexi is familiar with them.  I won’t use anyone who does not have the means to leave the house on their own and could take Lexi with them, making 17 the default minimum age. Also, someone working a part time job with a fairly extensive background check and license sounds good to me. I trusted the school enough to leave Lexi there for several hours so I must trust their ability to screen candidates. And, I have personally already been exposed to that individual’s personality which means there are not many surprises/disappointments when I return.

Another obvious and great resource to find a sitter is to talk with your local friends who use sitters. The mommy network is a huge and comfortable resource. If other parents you are compatible with trust their kids with this babysitter, then odds are it would be a great choice all around. 

As Lexi is just rounding out her fourth year of life and as such I have not started preparing her for babysitting duties. We’ll see how long her first pet survives before we think about preparing her to manage the car of others. 

Peggy Barresi
My oldest daughter always expressed an interest in being a babysitter. At age ten, she worked for a friend of mine as a mother’s helper from time to time. This entailed playing with or keeping two young children occupied while the mom did things around the house.

Leah loved it and begged to be allowed to babysit “for real,” meaning during the evening, with no parents in the house. We determined age 12 was a good starting point for this, with some ground rules:

• She had to complete a babysitting training class and learn infant CPR. Hallmark Health offers a good “Babysitting Basics” class at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. They cover everything from how to deal with kids who won’t go to bed, to what to do if you suspect the parent driving you home has had too much to drink.
• She could only babysit for people we knew.
• The parents had to be home by 10:00 pm.

Equipped with some training and with these initial guidelines in place, she set out to promote herself to our friends and neighbors. She was apparently a great sitter, and was quickly in high demand. She also got a regular gig on Wednesdays, doing after-school care for one family. After a year, she’d earned enough money to purchase her own Apple laptop computer.

The lessons learned were invaluable. She took on responsibility, became an authority figure, earned her own money and saved up for a big purchase, which gave her a tremendous sense of accomplishment. Babysitting was good to Leah, and she continued it through her high school years. Eventually, with her own transportation and a much later curfew, she really raked in the bucks. She even looked for work as a summer nanny this year before heading off to college, but to no avail.

Her younger, sister, Nina was all set to follow in Leah’s footsteps. She took the same babysitting class, and began to establish a clientele by filling in when Leah was not available. She, too, was good at child care. Unlike her sister, however, Nina didn’t enjoy it very much. Much to the disappointment of my friends and neighbors, she just wasn’t into babysitting. And, believe me, you want your babysitter to be into it. As with everything, each kid is different. Some are more enamored with the idea of babysitting, than with the reality. Based on my experience, it’s worth finding out which. 

Tasha Schlake Festel
I am quite a socialite. The dinner parties, the galas, the black tie affairs… well, it’s hard to keep up sometimes. It’s a wonder I can get anything done, what with all of my social obligations. It’s hard to be this popular.

OK, fine! Most of the events I attend are at jumpy places between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., but on the off chance I have something to do in the evening with my husband, we will need a sitter. Despite my lack of adult social obligations, my children are no strangers to babysitters. I went back to work when my daughter was one, and she was in full-time day care. Then I had my son, changed jobs, and hired a nanny. In addition to being care-giver to my kids, she was my link to the adult outside world by providing me with two key things: 1) adult conversation involving tales not kid-related, and 2) the occasional “date night.” Both were life/marriage savers at the time!

As my kids have gotten older and easier to manage (in most ways), I’ve branched out from my experienced (read: expensive) nanny to more local and affordable options. Unlike most people I know, I do not have the luxury of having family right around the corner. I have to use… neighborhood kids! And sometimes they’re… twelve! <GASP!>

I have never had a sitter that I didn’t already know. The thought of having someone just show up off the streets (or from Craigslist, Care.com, SitterCity, etc.) and leaving them alone with my kids makes me nauseous. I would like to think I’m a decent judge of character, but a brief encounter in my entranceway under the porch lights does not give me enough info to entrust the welfare of my child with a stranger. The babysitters I hire are all from my ‘hood. I know their mothers. I know their best friends. I’ve seen them interact with my kids at Friday night Bench Nights. They are part of the neighborhood family we’ve created.

When I have a younger or new sitter, we go out close to home. There are plenty of good choices (, , , , , , , , and so many more) within 5 miles of my house, that we can still feel like real live grown ups without being worried that our underage babysitter will have to hitchhike her way to the hospital in case of emergency. If I know we’re going to be out late or go all the way in to Boston (you know, 20 minutes away… ACK!),  then I try to get one of the older girls for the evening. By “older” I mean 14-16. I don’t have the “you must be able to drive” requirement because the girls are all from my neighborhood and their parents could be at my house within seconds in case of emergency.

Call it discrimination, call it unfair, call it ignorance. Whatever you call it, at this point in my kids’ lives, I will only hire female babysitters. I have a 5-year-old son and I’m sure he would just love to have a dude come over, but I know how he acts with older boys. I won’t put my daughter through an evening of testosterone overload, nor will I subject a potential male sitter to that level of physical torture and exhaustion. Perhaps when my son has a little more self control and I’ve found a very special, calm, responsible and take-charge boy will I then consider it.

Right now I have four girls that I try to use equally. (It takes me about a year to cycle through them since I go out so infrequently!) Each has her own strengths. Some are better for daytime, some for evening, some for shorter times, some for eternity. They are all awesome and I would recommend them to anyone looking for a reliable sitter.

My kids love having sitters. I’d like to think that it’s not because they’re happy to be away from me, but rather because it’s such a novelty and on sitter nights, they get “babysitter dinner.” This very special dinner is nothing more than a “Kid Cuisine,” a kid-friendly revival of an old-school TV dinner. I remember having TV dinners when I was a kid and had a sitter. I would look forward to those shaped foil trays with the mixed peas and carrots, some kind of meat product and overly processed mashed potatoes with synthetic gravy. Those things rocked! I wanted to share this tradition with my kids and make it (oddly) special.

As for letting my own kids babysit, I’ve been thinking about that already, believe it or not. My daughter is 7 ½ and begging to take a babysitting course so she can be a mother’s helper. I believe the age requirement through the Wakefield Rec Department is 8. So, next summer, I have a feeling we’ll be enrolled.

I don’t know how much of a help she’d be yet, to be perfectly honest. Even next summer when she’s reached the wise old age of 8, she’s still going to be, well, 8. I tend to think that if you need a sitter then you probably shouldn’t be a sitter. Call me crazy. I realize mother’s helpers are there when the mother is, in fact, home, but the goal is to let the mom off the hook, not give her one more little girl to watch. I’ve had “sitters” that have really been play dates. It just isn’t cool. My kid won’t do that to someone else.