Ok...slightly off topic but...we all have kids otherwise who would we be homeschooling. lol What do you pay your sitters? Ages & state you are in? There was an article in our local paper and....it made my jaw DROP. They have got to be kidding me!!! http://www.theeagle.com/local/Adventures_in_baby_sitting Published Friday, December 28, 2007 2:04 AM Adventures in baby-sitting By TIFFANY TORRES Eagle Staff Writer The countdown is under way for 2008 to begin -- and to find a sitter for New Year's Eve. Adventures in baby-sitting Eagle photo/Stuart Villanueva Buy a print It's one of the easiest nights of the year to secure a baby-sitting job, but for families new to the Brazos Valley or parents who don't often hire sitters, finding the right person can be trying. Those with experience suggest tapping sitters who have worked for friends or family members, dialing up neighborhood teenagers or dipping into the Rolodex to see if someone who's staying in on New Year's Eve might help someone else enjoy a night on the town. And of course there's the Internet; some parents turn to Web sites such as craigslist.org and sittercity.com to find sitters. Other suggestions: • Ask for a reference or two from the potential sitter. • Offer good wages. • Consider asking friends who also have young children and aren't going out. • If you're going to stay out late, offer to let the sitter stay overnight. • Discuss pay before the hire is made. Twin sisters Catie and Carrie Bestor, who are 18 and graduated from Bryan High last spring, said they depend on baby-sitting for income. The Blinn College freshmen sometimes sit as often as twice a week, they said. The Bestor sisters were booked this month by a Bryan couple for whom they've worked for years. They said when it comes to pay, they let parents determine the rate. They're "always on call," they said. "A lot of times we go months without baby-sitting, but we can make maybe $200 a year," Carrie Bestor said, adding that they average $10 to $15 an hour depending on the number of children. That's the national average, according to several parenting experts, who said younger baby sitters often make less. Bryan resident Julie McCollum, 40, said she typically finds baby sitters through A&M United Methodist Church, where she's a member, but lately she's offered the job to student workers at the Texas A&M lab where she works as a research assistant. The mother of three young boys and a 19-month-old daughter said she knows what she's looking for in a sitter. "We want somebody who's friendly and responsible; it's usually someone we know gets along with our kids," McCollum said. Sometimes the perfect choice already has plans. "I think the hardest thing about finding a baby sitter is that everyone is so busy it's hard to find someone that is free on that night," McCollum said. "There have been a couple of times where we would have to change plans or not do them at all because we couldn't find a baby sitter." Some parents, such as Amy Keally, a 31-year-old mother of three girls from Navasota, have a regular sitter. "We use Miss Polly [Mercer] because she's a very close friend. She is somebody that is close to our family, that we trust and is responsible enough to take care of our babies," Keally said. Mercer, who also lives in Navasota, taught the girls in pre-school and grew close to the family over the years. "I wouldn't trade it for the world. They're just like my great-grandkids, and I've known them all their lives," Mercer said. • Tiffany Torres' e-mail address is tiffany.torres@theeagle.com.
I do not have a regular sitter but when I need one, it is usually one of my sisters. I do baby-sit for my neighbor and she pays well. At least for me since money isn't really an issue. Usually I will get $125. a week or $25. a day. Sometimes she gives more if the little girl is sick or if I have to pick her up from school. I honestly would do it for free because Ems loves her company. But she wants to pay so I accept. Patty
I'd pay $10 an hour if I had four kids like the woman in the article. I live in a suburb of Atlanta and I usually pay a teen around $6 an hour for my two boys. On more than one occasion, I've had a girl offer me some of the money back because she thought I paid her too much. So I guess that must be a decent enough rate around here?
I pay $5/hour for my 2 boys. I also have been given money back, I tell them that I liked their service and I expect good service, it's for my kids so I will pay well, kwim?
I pay $10 an hour plus a holiday bonus and/or all admission costs. (Like if she's picking someone up. . .I pay for the subway for her and the child if needed.) We had to get a regular sitter/mother's helper when the twins were born.
:shock: that's the national average??? good grief. where do all those parents work that they can pay their sitter that much?! i get $3/hour for the 9 year old i babysit... her mother doesn't even make $10/hour, never mind paying her sitter that!
Um. . .I don't work. You have to remember that an average is brought up or down by the extremes. Probably a better number for you to look at is the mean. . .and I have no idea what that is. $10 an hour here is waaaaaayyy on the cheap side considering how many children we have. Our baby sitter is a family friend so she'll do it more cheaply. If I were going to just hire someone, I would likely be paying at least $25 to $30 an hour to watch just the younger 3. You're also talking about a 9yo not a baby and that makes a big difference.
^^^ sorry, that wasn't meant to be directed right at you! :lol: i was just really surprised - i know that babysitting rates are always going to vary from place to place, but to see a wage range like that as 'national average' really surprised me.... i'm also coming from a province with really low overall wages (which is why so many people are leaving here for work out west in oil) --- that makes a huge difference, because when parents only make minimum wage (or a little more) at their jobs, they definitely can't pay their sitters that much... edit: also, even ECE trained daycare workers often don't make that much an hour... a close friend of mine, with her ECE and SNA training makes $9/hour (i think.. might only be 8-something) right now working fulltime at daycare... and that's with training and experience... nobody makes much money here. :lol:
I would much rather have a sitter tell me a per hour rate. Around here, most do NOT, so I tend to pay for the job, rather than by the hour. But (thankfully) I am past that with my kids! I probably paid high for the area, but felt I was also paying for good will! Rachael has done a little sitting for two families in our VERY CLOSE proximity. One lives across the street from us. They have a 2yo and a 6mo, but I think she's only watched the younger one. The family two houses down has a little boy almost 1. She has sat for him and his slightly-older friend while the parents attended a Bible Study twice. I think both of these neighbors "underpay" her, probably more out of ignorance than any other reason, and she doesn't know how much to ask for, so she just accepts what is given her. I'm thinking it's less than $5 an hour. (Oh! I'm in the Central Ohio area!)
I also tend to pay for the job rather than per hour. And I also base it off of "external" factors. I observe the state of my home when I arrive (i.e. is it a complete mess or did the sitter take a moment to have the boys clean up)? Did she have to feed them dinner? How did they behave for her (which I can usually tell from the look on her face. If they were complete terrors I'll pay a little more)? Did she have to put them to bed? Is she actually playing with them or just handling situations? Etc.... Usually none of these things are the case, so I'll pay $25- $30 for a date with DH (2-3 hours). The only exception is a friend of mine who runs a state licensed day care out of her home. She has a set rate of $20 p/day p/child (a day being 8ish hours), so I try to pay her $30 for watching the three boys for half a day (up to 4 hours) or evening.
I have never hired a sitter for my kids. I have always got grandparents to watch them. I have also had a couple of my good friends ask to sit for my kids when they know dh and I want to go out and they don't charge me. I'd watch their kids for free too. I just found out that two sisters at our church babysit and I talked to them about it. They said they don't charge a certain amount either but take whatever the parents give them. We may get them to sit for Grace when we go out to dinner for my birthday.
We live about 3500 miles from my parents (we're in HI) so we have to get a sitter. Most sitters who are out of high school charge $8-13/hour for one child. We have a girl in high school babysit for us and she charges $6/hour.
Oh my, we couldn't afford paying $6-$13/hr for one child! I wonder if it's double that or if there's a break for 2 or more? We don't have any family close either, so we have exchanged babysitting, or we just don't go places, or go places with the kids. It's worked out okay so far....
Here is the article I sent to the gal that wrote the ad and I also copied a gal I know that works at the newspaper (she's pretty high up). I was left with an open jaw when I read the article "Adventures in baby-sitting". I felt we pay our babysitters pretty well at $8 an hour for 2 very well behaved children (5 & 8) who pretty much follow all the rules and know what they can and can't do...then I read your article that states the average is $10-$15 an hour. SERIOUSLY???? I did a quick Google search and found that your numbers are a bit off, which is a relief to me. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Babysitter/Hourly_Rate Perhaps you can run a follow up article so we don't have a bunch of potential sitters thinking they will be paid $15 an hour. No parent would ever have enough to get a date night. A cheap night out would be dinner $23, movie $11, small popcorn & drink $6 and babysitter $60 for a grand 4 hour total of $100. Forget trying to go out someplace nice like Christopher's...lol Note for you gals...Christopher's is our upscale rest. That you pay about $100 for dinner for 2 - that dinner salad is $10 alone so.... I'm glad to know that we are normal. I tend to pay the gals a little lower, maybe $7 an hour, if they didn't have to do anything and $8 an hour if they fed the kids or whatever - also depends on how well the house is picked up. I consider that when I babysat...as a kid say....20ish years ago...I got $1 an hour for 1-3 kids. Is inflation that bad that they are telling me it is 15 times higher now? I think not!
Yeah, when I babysat, one lady paid me $5/day for 9 hours of 3 kids! Her grandpa was always there as well, and he'd get mad yell at me when I ate their food for lunch: "You're already being paid, yet you think you get a free lunch too?!" and on and on! The lady said I could eat lunch there "if there's enough". My best job was two kids all day, basically 9 hours, free food, and extra if they went overtime, for $2/hr. when I was 14. They had a garden, so I fixed food fresh from the garden. The kids were usually not a problem. Someone else asked me to babysit, and these people raised my rate to $3/hour if I'd stay with them. So I did! That was rolling in the bucks back then!
Interesting. . .I pay about the median for my area. I think that babysitters should be higher paid for younger children too. . .LOL. . .which probably means we should be paying more than the median. But I will say this. . . People beg to babysit for us. We've had numerous girls (and a few guys) give us their phone numbers in hopes that we'll call them. I think that it's in part because we pay moderately well. It means that we can be choosy. . .and we are. Since the twins have been born, we have only had fully CPR certified, baby sitters that teach our kids foreign languages, music. . .you name it. ;-) Of course I don't think that you should pay more than you can afford. . .but it's just a note about paying baby sitters as well as you can afford to. As far as about 15 years ago. . .I too took whatever I was offered. But 15 years ago, most moms I knew stayed at home and there was no second income. I think what has "driven" the price up of babysitting isn't inflation but the demand. LOL But your letter was great!
Thank God Handsome slays the dragons so I can stay home. If I had to work outside of the home, I would have to take on two jobs, one for an income and the other to pay the sitter.:lol: Patty
Take son to this day care thing that cost around $10-15 an hour. Its a huge playground so they can play while you shop. Most the time my daughter will watch him for a bit. Sam
Patty, we actually went through a similar scenario when I was still in the Army. I had three kiddos under the age of 4. Between two with a sitter and one in the base daycare, we were spending $125 a week for daycare. My dh's check came in at $225 for 2 weeks at one point and he ended up being a stay-at-home dad for awhile. It's funny to look back and think that $1 an hour was good money!! My first "real" babysitting job (I was the oldest of 5 and was the second "mama" of the family) was for 3 kids who were total brats. The oldest wasn't but a few years younger than me which didn't help. I was only 13 or 14 at the time. Well, one day they had me sooo upset that I put them in 3 different chairs facing a blank tv screen, went in another room and bawled my eyes out!! The upside was that when people around town found out that I could handle that bunch they knew I could handle any kids! By my Sr year in hs my sisters and I had clientel (sp) of drs, lawyers, and dentists!:lol: No exaggeration! There is only 3 years between my next two sisters and I so we would take turns accepting jobs which kept the jobs coming. The things is, alot of the a families met me when I came to watch their kids. I wouldn't dream of letting my kids do something like that now!!
A dear friend of mine works full time. Her husband also works but his insurance is horrible. She decided to work so they would have better insurance. Now they have fabulous insurance but she hardly has any money left after paying the sitter and paying her car payment and insurance. She needed to purchase a new car to get her down the hill for work. I used to care for the children, at no charge, but her hours became longer and with homeschooling I couldn't do it anymore. Now she has to pay. I am not sure what she pays but it is a nice chunk of her check. Patty
