Having a horrible time finding babysitters
I have tried to find a part-time babysitter without success! I have tried www.care.com and no one returned my phone calls. Now I am trying www.sittercity.com, and have had one person not return my calls! I am just wondering why people advertise themselves to babysit if they really don't want to? I just need a couple hours a week of "mommy" time. Is that too much to ask?
Amanda
Groups:
Churches have definitely
Churches have definitely helped us. I also know that some local hospitals offer babysitting classes. They might keep lists of "graduates" or have a way to post a notice that you're looking for someone. I have a hard time getting our babysitters to call us back too -- I reach them and they say they have to call me back, but they don't. Ugh.
Kristen De Deyn Kirk
Editor, Mytidewatermoms.com
Definitely not too much to ask
The ideas of looking to the YMCA, etc. are excellent. They usually have regular options for parents to drop off their kids in a safe environment for a few hours while you step away and have some mommy time.
Our neighborhood also has a Babysitting Co-op where parents earn babysitting time by babysitting themselves. If you babysit for a few hours you can take those hours and ask for someone in the co-op to babysit for you. It doesn't even need to be the same parents of the child you babysat for. So you might want to see if this is something you could set up in your area.
I will say that you should make sure to investigate the homes and parenting styles of the people who might be babysitting for you. There are definitely some parents in our local co-op who we would avoid at all costs because of how they treat their own children. It's not an abuse thing, more like how much they pay attention to their own kids and how/if they discipline their own children.
mother's morning out
If the mommy time you're looking for is during the day, I'd suggest doing an internet search for mother's morning out programs at local churches. At some it's part of the preschool program options.
If you're military I suggest the on-base child development centers, they just started a new program of part-time care for appointments, shopping, etc. and you can reserve up to a month in advance and it's $3/hour/child between the hours of 6 am and 6pm.
Night-time sitters we've always found at our church, the youth group is a great place to find responsible teenagers - we know their families from church and we're familiar with the kids and they know us as well. It's worked out well for our family.
Good luck! And no, a couple of hours of mommy time is never too much to ask!
Michelle Galvez, Community Editor
Try neighbors, colleges and church... and Parent Night Out!
My husband and I have struggled with this too, as we don't have family in the area. When I was still working in an office, we lucked out with our regular child-care provider by asking around at work. We also have relied occasionally on the high school daughter of an old kindergarten teacher. I have two other friends (though not local) who put an ad/notice in the local college newspaper as well as their church bulletin and found, respectively, a very nice college student looking for a little extra income and an older woman who missed having kids around. If your neighborhood has a newsletter, another idea might be to put in a notice seeing if anyone would be interested in joining a babysitting cooperative where you trade off times caring for each other's kids. Finally, my husband and I have enjoyed signing our kids up for various "Parent Night Out" programs run by local businesses that serve kids... the YMCA, My Gym and indoor bounce houses such as Jumping Joey's in Williamsburg are among the choices. They're usually held once a month and while they're not so cheap, many give you 3-4 hours of free time for dinner, movie and a nice walk. For us it is worth the splurge sometimes!
Alison Johnson