PART TIME OPPORTUNITIES A102
NUMBER A102
BABYSITTING
Babysitting is a good way to pick up some extra cash. There are different types of babysitting and it is best to acquaint yourself and make absolutely sure of what you are going to let yourself in for as a babysitter. Are you going to take new-bourns in as part of your plan or are you going to stick to children 2 years and older. Are you going to prepare food and do the housework or are you going to baby-sit only. Are you going to do this full time instead of getting a job or are you going to do the babysitting only a few times or maybe even once a week.
There are people that I know who do this as a full time job and they put in 40 hours a week babysitting for husbands and wives that work out. They do quite well. Of course most of these people do everything that a normal mom or dad would be expected to do if they were home instead of working for a living. The job description of these type of babysitting jobs is more like that of a house sitter, but it does include babysitting when the children get home from school or when ever they are around in the summertime.
Let’s start off with just having a babysitting job. It usually happens when you are the ripe old age of 13 or 14 years old and it usually comes from one of the friends or relatives that has a problem finding a good babysitter, so they proceed to offer you a few bucks to take care of their son or daughter for a couple of hours. Now depending upon the age of the youngster, this can be easy or it can be a son-of-a-gun. If the youngster is a newborn, things can get a little interesting. If the baby is a good baby and he or she sleeps most of the time you are babysitting for him or her, it can be a very rewarding job. However, if the newborn is one that stays up all night and wants to be held, it can be quite another matter. Then usually, whatever the parents give you for babysitting is not enough.
What is babysitting? It’s basically taking care of someone else’s children while they are away. What kind of pay can you expect? We used to pay our sitters $5.00 an hour when they took care of our son. That was about 15 years ago. I know of one person that takes care of four children every day in New York City and she gets $500.00 each week. However, she not only takes care of the children, but also does all the household chores. Around here in central Wisconsin a job like she has in New York would pay about half of what she gets or about $250.00 a week. The children that the woman I know from New York takes care of are children between the ages of 5 and 10.
Changing diapers was not one of my specialties and I never cared for it so I usually, unless I was in a real hurt for the money, would turn down jobs like that. My sister was much better at that kind thing and could deal with diapers, so she usually got the jobs that I turned down. When I was doing babysitting for extra income I usually got about $5.00 a night. But in today’s world, I guess the rate for our area is somewhere around 25 to 30 dollars a night depending on how long the people were gone. Also it depends on whom you’re babysitting for. If it is doctors, which are plentiful in our area, the pay is quite good, where if it’s a blue-collar worker, the pay isn’t quite as good.
The only qualifications you have to have when babysitting is patience, patience, and more patience. All you have to know is how to take care of children, and if kids drive you up a wall, I don’t recommend trying your hand at this occupation. Getting to have people know that you are willing to baby-sit is just a matter of posting your ad on a bulletin board. Don’t worry; you’ll soon have plenty of calls.
Normally, the person requiring your services is responsible for you getting to and from the jobsite. You will be paid in cash at the end of your night after mom and dad get home to relieve you. If you are going to take a job as a full time babysitter, you will be expected to provide transportation to and from your work. Babysitting is a good way to pick up the extra cash that you need. There is one more way to baby-sit and that’s to do the sitting in your own home. Sometimes this works out for everyone involved a lot better. If the people you’re working for like to party, sometimes it works out better for them if they don’t have to worry about junior until the next day. That’s when the above arrangement works out much better for them. All mom and dad do is drop junior off at your house where you watch him or her and mom and dad will pick him or her again sometime the next morning.
There are things happening in this country of ours that are basically terrible. If you pick up any newspaper, the changes are pretty good that somewhere, someplace there is a bum rap going on in the court system that involves a baby-sitter. Terrible as it may seem, there are people out there that are completely nuts, off their rocker, half a bubble short or whatever else you want to call it, and they are, basically, “sue happy”.
Here’s the way something like this happens. The baby-sitter hires out to baby-sit for the youngster for an evening. A week goes by and there are no more calls from the person that hired the Baby-sitter, instead here’s a policeman or women standing on your doorstep with a court order that you are to appear on sexual charges for abusing the 3 year old male that you recently took care of for a night. You look at this in shook and don’t know what to do about it.
This type of situation is happening everyday, and the sad part about it is our stupid, idiotic court systems encourage these kinds of lawsuits. The judges, the district attorneys and the police officers that we hire and pay are out to get us in any way they possibly can.
Did you know that you are committing fourth degree sexual abuse if you give your son or daughter a hug? Don’t ever kiss them; you’ll be committing third degree sexual assault. This is how bad our society has gotten. A poor young person doing baby-sitting, without knowing the consequences, can actually get in real bad trouble just by trying to make a little extra spending money.
I write this as a word of caution to the unsuspecting person that takes on a baby-sitting job. The way around this type of Bullcrap is to know your clients. Know the people that you will be baby-sitting for. There still are people that will pay money for good baby-sitters, but I just wanted you to be aware of some of the crazy things happening in the world of baby-sitting. Although the chances of something like the above nightmare happening to you are pretty slim, it still could happen.
That’s pretty much everything that I have to say about babysitting and what I know about it. Just make sure of one thing before you say yes to anyone. Make sure that you know the person you are dealing with before going over to baby sit. This is one of those rules that is not a written rule, but it is a rule that you should be made aware of. A lot of bad things have come from babysitting for someone else’s children. I’m not saying it will happen to you, but I am saying that it could. This is one occupation that has led to accusations of child molesting, sexual abuse cases, and child beating cases. I wish you the best of luck on your venture.