On FB I saw a discussion about how much to pay a babysitter. The answers to that did not surprise me as much as the age of the babysitters. Would you pay an 11-13 year old to watch your kids? And for fun, how much do you pay a babysitter?
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On FB I saw a discussion about how much to pay a babysitter. The answers to that did not surprise me as much as the age of the babysitters. Would you pay an 11-13 year old to watch your kids? And for fun, how much do you pay a babysitter?
I pay $7/hr for my 3 kids. We do not live near family, so if we go out without the girls we get a babysitter. I can not imagine leaving my girls with someone that young though. 14-15 would be the youngest I would consider. Most offten we use college students.
DSD has been babysitting her sister and cousin since she was 12. We had her do the babysitting course as soon as she was able. As it is for family we pay in different ways - cash, treats etc - depending on various factors. I am not sure what I would do if I had to hire a non-family baby sitter. It has never come up.
Yes i would pay an 11 - 13 year old to watch my kids depending on who that 11 - 13 year old was. I've had a 12 year old watch my kids before and she is a fantastic babysitter, very mature for her age. She's 13 now and she'll be watching my kids again in a couple of weeks. I love her. An 11 year old would probably be a hard sell on me for any real babysitting job. Maybe an hour to watch one of my kids. I do leave Emma(11years) home alone and i would probably let her watch Cecilia, or Nathalie for a short period of time but i never have. But not everybody. Since they are siblings and Emma would be outnumbered there would certainly be a mutiny and all chaos would break loose.
Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit. But i think the others would have a hard time respecting her as 'in charge' if they were all together.
As for pay, i guess we've never hammered out an actual rate, we always kind of 'guesstimate' I think it typically comes out to 8 or 9 dollars an hour.
I have three nieces(all in their twenties) coming to watch my kids for a weekend while we go to a wedding far away. We plan on paying them each 100 bucks plus a little for gas. That would be a very low hourly rate for each of them. But a)they get to team up, b)they are excited to come and think it will be a fun trip and c)they are family and have always been wllling to watch my kids for nothing or less than usual. Sometimes they won't accept any money.
I started babysitting when i was 12 BTW.
I did too. And yes, I would allow an 11-13 year old to watch T, depending on the 11-13 year old. It's not that hard to watch a movie and eat pizza for a couple of hours while we're gone. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by KimPossible
We most often use my parents as babysitters since they are literally right up the street and free, but when we do hire a teen babysitter, we offer $20 for an evening.
We paid one of my adult friends $30 for three hours once, other than that, we use our lunch break as date time or wait until we are visiting family to go anywhere. My sister also stayed with him for a 4 day cruise me and dh went on and I paid her $200.
I would let an 11 year old watch the 4 year old, but not the baby and hte 4 year old and only for a couple of hours.
The girls next door have watched the kids when they were 11 and 12. They are very mature and their parents are right next door... And their are two of them. I wouldn't have one young sitter because my kids are all so young (and there is a bunch of them :) ) I'm not sure what the going rate is...
We pay $10-$12/hour-- depending on the age of the sitter. So far, we've only left our 4 home (right now we just take the tiny baby with us.)
I would hire a sitter who was 11-13, if we didn't have so many kids.
Our oldest daughter is 9 and she helps watch other kids in our neighborhood now. As the oldest of 5, she's quite responsible and great with kids. I'm sure that in another couple of years she'd be great with other people's kids (like Kim, we won't leave her with our own, for the same reasons....)
I also started babysitting when I was 11. I had a regular job where I watched 3 young kids and think I did a pretty great job :).
Very interesting. I think when my oldest is 11, I would let them all stay together, but some random hired sitter would need to be older.
Random?Quote:
Originally Posted by AlyssaEimers
I don't hire random people.
I wouldn't let any random person watch my kids regardless of age.