How to Keep a Babysitter

Good babysitters are worth their weight in gold. If you encounter a babysitter who is responsible, caring and enthusiastic, you must take steps to hold on to this commodity. There are ways to welcome a babysitter and show your appreciation to keep this quality caregiver.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Compensate the sitter well. Consider the sitter's age, number and temperament of your children, whether the sitter drives and the going rate in your community. Ask other parents what they pay and meet or raise this bar.

2. Pay in cash. Everyone loves cash in hand and this saves the babysitter a trip to the bank to cash a check.

3. Include a half hour of getting to know you time in the first session. Plan to pay the sitter for this cushion of time that you use to show her around the house and warm up to the children.

4. Provide the sitter with a brief list of instructions. Although it's tempting to expand this list to include every idiosyncrasy of your child and household, limit the instructions to the essentials, such as phone numbers, medications, alarm codes and garage codes.

5. Limit the sitter's duties to childcare. You are paying the sitter to interact with your children, so don't expect him to fold laundry or dust. If your sitter performs unsolicited chores, tip him.

6. Come home at the promised time. Better yet, come home 10 minutes early. The babysitter has evening plans too, even if they only include going to bed.

7. Let the woman in the household do the driving if the babysitter is a non-driving teen. Most teenage girls feel more comfortable being picked up and dropped off by a woman late at night.

[sheila325]

on 7/2/2009 Thanks for sharing this article. To find free nanny jobs, you can also check out Nannytoyou.com for free online database of thousands of nanny jobs. Hope this one helps.

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