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The Price of Babysitting
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Anonymous
| Most high school kids in my neighborhood get $5 to $7 per hour. |
Anonymous
|
When I was an AP they neighbor called my HM asking how much I charged per hour to babysit her SN child.
My HM said $18.00/hour and the neighbor started laughing and said "wow the girls around here charge $8 to stay with him while I run errands!" HM answers her "I can assure you she'll be doing a wonderful job with your child and not just being paid to sit your child in front of the computer". I hold a masters in SE and when that happened I had over 10 years of experience teaching children with combined disabilities Today I'm a mother and I know exactly what kind of sitter to hire and when. There's no way I'll hire a $20/hour sitter to watch my kids overnight, and the same way I'm not paying someone $6/hour to sit my kids in front of the TV all afternoon long. |
Anonymous
seriously, a 13yo helping a 7 and 8 yo to do homework is not tutoring! |
Anonymous
Where were you living? That seems really high, unless you were in a big city or really lucky! I lived in a city (fair size)but I was an extremely responsible teenager and my parents insisted on meeting both parents before allowing me to sit. At age 16, one couple left their two children with me and went to NYC for the weekend. One was 3 yrs. old and the other was about 1 yr. old. It was a different world then and, believe me, I never had a girl friend or boy friend over. There were never any problems and kids behaved better for me than for their parents. I was in high demand because I was so responsible and my mother set the pay rate. I baby sat enough that by my 2nd year of college I had enough to buy my first car and pay the insurance. I was lucky but the parents were also lucky because they knew their babysitter wasn't a twit. |
Anonymous
Wow! If I got $2 raise for every 6mo experience I got I'd be earning close to $100/hour by now... LOL |
Anonymous
| I would have gladly paid $20 an hour for a trustworthy, experienced person to stay with my SN child when he was younger. We never went anywhere because we couldn't get a sitter. |
Anonymous
Exact same here- 31 now, and babysat an INFANT at 11. For $3 an hour which was more than my $2.50/ hour clients. |
Anonymous
NP here. Of course it is. And why would you quibble over such an inconsequential point? |
Anonymous
I doubt PP put this job experience in her teaching resume... |
Anonymous
Could also be they didn't really want to babysit at all. |
Anonymous
| My 16 y.o. DS, who is CPR-certified via lifeguard training, gets $10 an hour in our Chevy Chase (MD) 'hood. In addition, parents will usually round up the amount. Needless to say, he (and we) are amazed by their generosity. On the other hand, he is responsible and good-natured -- on his last gig he sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for 30 mins. to a kid who was having a hard time falling asleep. And the kids like him because he actually plays with them -- one neighbor asked him to come over during last Feb's snow storm just to wrestle with her kids in the basement so she could get a break for an hour. Having said this, I do think he's also capitalizing on the low supply of sitters. Most high school kids are just too busy to babysit, especially during the school year. He sits mostly during the summer, except for a few families he really likes. To parents who are looking for teen sitters, I'd suggest you start cultivating them early. We already have neighbors asking us when our DD, who's 10 -- and wonderful with younger kids, will be able to work as a "parent's helper"! |
Anonymous
|
I'm 32 yo. I babysat in HS and got got $3-4 / hour. In college, I got $5 / hr. Most recently, I babysat while in grad school at a large university in lower COLA area. I was 29-30 years of age at the time.
The going rate in the area was $8-10 / hr for college or grad students. I had a regular gig babysitting Wednesdays 7-10pm and Saturdays 7- ??? for a family with 3 children: ages 7, 9, 12. I drove myself 7 miles to their house (although mind you, it took 10-15 minutes to drive 7 miles). The parents were awesome (ie- respected my judgement) and really just let the kids relax while I was there (ie- watch movies), so I thought the money was great. Over the course of graduate school, I made $1000s in cash. Funny enough, the family had moved to this University town from Potomac, MD. I'm sure they thought I was a steal. Overall, it was a win-win for everyone. I also did some overnight babysitting for a family where mom was an overnight L&D nurse and dad drove a Fed Ex truck and had been put temporarily on nights. I arrived at 11pm slept in an extra bedroom and left when mom came home at 7:30 am. The girls were usually asleep the whole time. They paid me $40 / night. |
Anonymous
| My biggest gig in HS was old lady sitting. I would sleep at her house, every night, and I was paid $100 a week to do so. It was a great gig. My main role was making her feel safe and keep her children from worrying too much. |
Anonymous
I didn't put it on my teaching resume, you're right, but the experience of helping others learn was part of what made me want to become a teacher and now a professor. But seriously - in a lighthearted thread like this where we're all laughing about how little we were paid to take care of children, I can't believe you're nitpicking over the fact that I called myself a tutor. I was hired to BE a TUTOR (the mother's term)...who cares if what i did was "helping with homework"? Sheesh! |
Anonymous
| Ignore the nitpicker. He's on most threads and extremely tiresome. Actually, he should be banned from DCUM for disrupting posts/threads. |