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Houston Babies
Babysitters
So after reading a very interesting post on MM:
https://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/38554808.aspx
I wondered how easy/ hard it was for those of use with kiddos to find babysitters.
I can say that we've tested two since we've moved to Pland and neither worked. Maybe I'm being too picky.
So we use my mom if we are both going out or one of us will stay home with buster if the other needs to go somewhere. We have friends here but I'd never think to ask them to watch my kid when they all have kids of their own unless it was an emergency etc.
So am I the odd man out? And if you found a great babysitter was it just trial and error, fate, something else? I really need help with this one, because like the "bad" friend in the post, I haven't attended things because I had no one to watch Cam and bringing him is not always an option if I don't want to ruin someone else party.
Man that was wordy. TIA
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Babysitters
Why are you up like me?
Email me their names/ numbers; I'd love it.
Wow - can't believe that post generated 3 plus pages worth of replies.
Leaving children with non-family babysitters seems like it would vary widely from person to person. Not everyone is comfortable doing it for many reasons.
The older my kids are, the more comfortable I am with using a variety of babysitters. I've used neighborhood teenagers to help me at the swimming pool or watch them during the day. But if we go out at night I prefer to have an older more experienced babysitter who can handle feeding, bathing and putting the girls to bed. For anything overnight we use my Mom or MIL but we're lucky that they live nearby and can do it if needed.
The two older and experienced babysitters we use were found word-of-mouth. But even when I call ahead, sometimes they aren't available. That's just the way it is.
Even if they were invited, I would never want to take either of my children to a wedding shower.
I agree. With a young baby, I felt very different than I do now with a young and an older toddler. Even now, though, I am just not comfortable with a teenager having to go through a nighttime routine with 2 kids. I would use one during the day but I don't know any....
We have no family here at all, so if we didn't find a sitter we would never be able to go anywhere and that's just not an option. DH and I relish some alone time and it helps keep our marriage strong. This benefits our kids as well. Also, my DH's job involves a lot of social events, especially in the summer, and while I certainly don't *have* to attend with him, the parties/dinners are geared toward couples and it's important to him that I go as often as possible.
When T was 3 mos old, I needed more of a mother's helper and was able to find someone amazing via referrals from my mom's group. She would watch the baby 2x a week while I was home doing things around the house. After a couple months, I felt very confident leaving him alone with her and she also started sitting for us at night. She also started watching M when he came along but then had a baby of her own and was not available at night as much.
I found another sitter through friends and she was great but because several people I knew were using her, you had to book her weeks in advance. I also would feel awkward because I wouldn't want to use her for a date night when a friend would have an important function of some sort and yadda yadda, so I had to find one on my own.
I used care.com and had one bad experience (she never watched the kids, so it wasn't bad b/c of anythign with them. she no showed on us when he had plans) and then found someone great. I posted an ad and was very specific about what I was looking for (that didn't stop a lot of unqualified people from responding but it helped me narrow down easily).care.com does a background check, but DH performed another one. i called her references. We felt really good about her but still had her only come for a couple hours during the day for the 1st time. Now we use her all the time. She still has other families she sits for, but we use her the most and she is almost always available for us. We use her probably 3-4x a month. She even stayed overnight for our anniversary, which was a revelation.
Again, grandparents are not an option for us so we had no choice but to go "outside our family." We have been really lucky. I think a good sitter is worth their weight in gold but I also think we have to have realistic expectations of people. As long as my kids are happy and I can trust her in my house, what more can I ask for? I know some people like to have their sitters clean or do other stuff but I don't ask that of mine. Her focus is our kids and they LOVE her.
I laughed and laughed at the suggestions to just "adjust" the child's naptime. bwhahahaha. For some kids yes, that would work. For others, not so much.
We've only ever left Marion with family. Including flying my mom in from Alaska to watch her overnight for the first time. I do need to get better about that though and find an actual sitter, well contact the one that's been rec'd to me.
It just made me laugh too at the suggestion of just find a teenager. This isn't real life babysitters club and not everyone lives in a suburb where you know all your neighbors either.
It's like everything in life though, some people have an easy time of finding a sitter, others don't have it so easy.
j+k+m+e | running with needles
I thought maybe because I was reading it really late last night that I was being irrational and sitters are just everywhere. But no both the girls I had come over (17 & 18) were not bad, I just wouldn't leave them with the boy for any extended period of time (sure not bedtime). One of them I wasn't even sure that I'd leave the house if she was here.
Thanks for letting me know that you can actually put a help wanted add on Care.com Rayskit. Maybe I'll do that with my high maintenance request.
When he's older I'm sure I'll relax more. Right :-)
We use my sister for most of our sitting needs. I'd totally pimp her out to you, but she's always got plans.
For a non-family sitter I'd use someone that friends suggested. If I were in a bind I'd take V's suggestion of care.com, but I would try to exhaust all of my other options first.
I personally feel like we need time without Cooper. My sister is the only family member that lives here so if she can't keep him or we want to do something with her, we have to find someone else.
Our subdivison does a newsletter monthly and puts a list of kids who can do odd and end stuff like house sitting, dog walking, and baby sitting. They list the age and if the kid is CPR certified. We will probably use it when Cooper is a little older and we've also considered talking to our neighbor. They have a teenage daughter and the dad is a retired cop so I feel that she'd be somewhat responsible, however we'd only test these people out during the afternoon when J and I were close by - not for an evening out partying.
We mainly use my sister too. She just comes over and spends the night when she watches Rena.
Also, my next door neighbor and I also take turns babysitting each other kiddos once a month (once they are asleep). I actually enjoy going over to her house to watch her boys. No work is really required since they're asleep and I get to relax and watch TV, read my magazines, etc. And it's great because it's free since we trade off.
We also trade off babysitting with Rena's BFF once in awhile. Her mom will drop off BFF to our house so the girls can play and vice versa. So we're lucky that we haven't had to "hire' a babysitter...but I know eventually we'll need to find one. I might be asking starlette for those names at some point!
I would not leave a 17-18 year old at home with my kids. Part of that is b/c we have 2, another part is that most things we are going out for would require the sitter to bathe and put them to bed.
What I asked for:
At least 3-5 years experience sitting for kids OTHER THAN FAMILY MEMBERS. You will see a lot of ppl whose experience is cousins, etc
3 references I could call personally outside of whatever was listed on care (they could be the same ppl as on care but i would want to talk to them, not just listen to their recordings)
experience with bedtime routine
willing to establish a long term relationship with our family
must be willing to have 1 set saturday night (2nd sat for date night) and availability for other nights with notice
not too far away from us- like someone in Channel View can not really be trusted to be reliable and i would feel bad making them drive home after 10 pm
What I got:
a 22 year old who works as a teacher's assistant at a school for autistic kids
has a reliable car; lives in jersey village so not too close but a reasonable drive
3 great references, including sitting for the principal of the school she works at
long standing relationships with other families but still has good availability. we have her at least every 2nd saturday plus sometimes on sundays for a lunch/matinee date
We really like her and there were more like her out there. We just scored with the 2nd person. The 1st was a nursing student but some of the things i realized after the fact were red flags were things like a much older boyfriend (she was 24, he is in his late 30s. that's not the kind of relationship where she is going to give up at a lot of saturdays to babysit) and the fact that she wanted $15-18/hour. she was the 1st person i agreed to meet after looking at all the applications and we were willing to pay the $15 hourly rate b/c she was CPR cert and all kinds of stuff and we would have used her a lot less. but that was a red flag in retrospect b/c she thought she was really the bees' knees and was so good that we were so lucky to have found her. sure enough, she cancelled the 1st time (which was supposed to be the trial run) and no showed the 2nd time with no call or contact at all.
anyway, didn't mean for this to turn in to a novel but IMO having a reliable sitter (family or not but someone who is available for you more often than not) is such a good thing for moms, our marriages and our kids!
I think it is a very personal choice on whether to leave your baby with a sitter or not.
Personally, I would have no trouble leaving E with a teenager, but it could be because at 13 years old I was babysitting multiple children (ages 7, 3 and 1) by myself for a family friend. They always trusted me and I was fine (and this was before the age of cell phones). Because of the good job I did with them, many of their friends I didn't know also hired me to babysit for them throughout high school.
We just used our first teenager because we are lucky enough to have a lot of sitters to choose from usually. However this past friday night, we got invited out with my bro & SIL for his birthday. None of my usual peeps could do it, so I called my church and they found me a teenager. I knew OF her, but I didn't know/know her and she was fine.
I don't think it's a bad thing at all that you are more picky about who keeps Cam--he's YOUR baby. However, if you want to find someone, I would definitly call starlettdir for her girls and I have a whole list of high school girls in your area that go to my church that you could try out if needed.
Good luck!
p.s. FWIW, I would probably have taken a PnP to the ladies house for the shower if it coincided with nap--E will sleep in one of those. If it was a party at a restaurant, I would have had to pass, though.