"Hire a college kid" -- the go to answer for summer

[Anonymous]

Post on your facebook page that you are looking.
You never know who might know a responsible college student looking for a job.

Does your neighborhood have a facebook page? Post there.

Church/Synagogue?

[Anonymous]

I think a possible solution if you're being very strict is to have someone come for a live-in situation.

A former sitter of ours just posted on a childcare facebook group looking for a summer position, possibly live-in. Her parents bought a new house out of the state a few months ago and she's sort of stuck for the summer. We don't need/want this, but this seems like the most ideal situation. Have them quarantine with you or where they are, then they stay with you.

[Anonymous]

Post on Nextdoor. I have seen a good number of high school and college kids posting on our Nextdoor group looking for odd jobs or offering to tutor online or do grocery shopping for elderly neighbors. If camps are cancelled but the social distancing rules are more relaxed, hiring a neighborhood high school or college kid would be feasible. We have friends who have shared a sitter in order to reduce the cost.

But that assumes that people are ok with some limited contact with other people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are making entirely too much effort here. The go to answer, at least here, seems to be to demand that 100% telework be allowed until camps/schools reopen.

100% telework doesn’t help with the fact that my 3 and 5 year old need to be supervised, fed, and kept busy.

A thousand times, this. I can't be 100% on for work when I also need to be 100% on supervising my 3 year old. I'm lucky my work is being flexible about hours, so long as the work gets done. But DH? No, he works for a bank and they demand he be fully available for client calls from 8 am to 6 pm, no excuses. And the client calls are constant right now, as you might imagine for someone who does small business banking. That means I spend 8 to 6 attempting to juggle work and kid and making meals and general house stuff (poorly, I might add), scarf down dinner at 6:05 and then work until 11 pm or so when my brain just can't process anything any more. Every. Single. Day. And I'm supposed to do this for months?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have heard this solution proposed several times. This seems to be the solution to summer for a lot of working parents, if camps are closed and offices are open.

But how are we supposed to find some random college kid that: a) we can trust enough to leave our young children with for hours each day... during a pandemic; b) is not an asymptomatic carrier; c) is willing to watch kids and risk exposure to the virus from our family; and d) we can afford? Even at $15/hour, which I assume would be the bare minimum for a college student, that's $600 per week (8 hrs/day, 5 days/week).

Please explain how you plan to make this work for your family. Are you already doing searches, putting out feelers? Would you hire via a phone interview?? I am having a hard time with the entire idea, but it may be one of our only options.

$600 a week....how many kids do you have? How much does the camp you have them signed up for cost? I thought most full day camps were at least $300/week per kid? And since you say "children" I'm assuming you have at least two...so wouldn't you be paying at least $600/week anyway?

[Anonymous]

Talk to your neighbors.

[Anonymous]

My suggestion -
I think you can advocate for telework until school is officially done. That seems like a reasonable compromise. So do one more week in June like you are doing now. Take one week off in June and one in July. Husband does the same but different weeks. That covers you for two weeks each month. Not like you can go anywhere any way. So that gets you to the last’s week in June. If you can, Bring a relative in for a week at the end of June. If you are still on telework, you can be half listening but make an easy summer backyard schedule for adult to follow. You still do nap. Repeat in July of two weeks parents take off, one week of crazy (if you can get telework) and one week relative. My home is by then in August things will either be much more relaxed and clearer or much worse in which case you would not want a college kid helping you anyway.

One week of you not having to do child care and work will make you feel like a rock star. You will be so much less fried and happy. Same for DH. It is really a miracle.

In terms of finding someone, can you call your daycare / preschool (assuming they are closed) and ask them to pass your name to teachers who might want to work? Nextdoor list serve is next best. I would have a hard time hiring a total random to come watch my kids. But a coworkers kid, former daycare teacher, neighbors math tutor, basically someone who someone else has seen with kids before, sure

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP- How were you normally going to find summer care that is less than that? I'm a teacher and hopefully I can find a summer nanny job. My own kid is old enough to be alone by himself and I need the money.

Camps are $150-200/week per child. Max $400/week. College student will run $600-800/week ($15-20 per hour).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Post job at local college. Conduct phone/zoom interview. Call references. Yes, it’s expensive.

Colleges are closed. How would you post and who would see it?

Colleges are not closed. They are operating online. Job boards moved online many years ago. Email the career services department and ask how to post. Some schools have separate job boards for babysitting/tutoring/etc. type positions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard this solution proposed several times. This seems to be the solution to summer for a lot of working parents, if camps are closed and offices are open.

But how are we supposed to find some random college kid that: a) we can trust enough to leave our young children with for hours each day... during a pandemic; b) is not an asymptomatic carrier; c) is willing to watch kids and risk exposure to the virus from our family; and d) we can afford? Even at $15/hour, which I assume would be the bare minimum for a college student, that's $600 per week (8 hrs/day, 5 days/week).

Please explain how you plan to make this work for your family. Are you already doing searches, putting out feelers? Would you hire via a phone interview?? I am having a hard time with the entire idea, but it may be one of our only options.

$600 a week....how many kids do you have? How much does the camp you have them signed up for cost? I thought most full day camps were at least $300/week per kid? And since you say "children" I'm assuming you have at least two...so wouldn't you be paying at least $600/week anyway?

Nope. Camps are $150-200 per week, per child. Some of the more expensive camps are $300-400 but we weren't planning on doing those.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are making entirely too much effort here. The go to answer, at least here, seems to be to demand that 100% telework be allowed until camps/schools reopen.

100% telework doesn’t help with the fact that my 3 and 5 year old need to be supervised, fed, and kept busy.

A thousand times, this. I can't be 100% on for work when I also need to be 100% on supervising my 3 year old. I'm lucky my work is being flexible about hours, so long as the work gets done. But DH? No, he works for a bank and they demand he be fully available for client calls from 8 am to 6 pm, no excuses. And the client calls are constant right now, as you might imagine for someone who does small business banking. That means I spend 8 to 6 attempting to juggle work and kid and making meals and general house stuff (poorly, I might add), scarf down dinner at 6:05 and then work until 11 pm or so when my brain just can't process anything any more. Every. Single. Day. And I'm supposed to do this for months?

Yup. Join the club!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP- How were you normally going to find summer care that is less than that? I'm a teacher and hopefully I can find a summer nanny job. My own kid is old enough to be alone by himself and I need the money.

Camps are $150-200/week per child. Max $400/week. College student will run $600-800/week ($15-20 per hour).

Not where I live. The cheap not well run camps are $350 per kid and I have seen some go up to $700 (horse camp).

[Anonymous]

Go on Nextdoor to ask, ask friends and coworkers. Your making it more difficult than it needs to be.

[Anonymous]

We found our college aged nanny last summer through our neighborhood Nextdoor. I made a post detailing what I was looking for/what the hours and responsibilities were, and had at seven people reach out. And that was last summer, when there weren’t hordes of kids whose internships/summer jobs got cancelled. I asked for three references, conducted a short interview (you could do Zoom), and hired who I liked best. It wasn’t really hard at all. My kids loved her and she will be working for us again this summer. You could also try the education department of any local colleges — many have listservs that send out job opportunities to their students.

Yes, it was more expensive than camp but my kids didn’t really like the day camps they went to the previous few summers so we figured we’d try something new.

[Anonymous]

If you have 2+ kids, aren't you paying around 600$/week for camps anyway?