Calling All Babysitters!!!

Funny story, huh? I once taped a diaper to my best friend's baby daughter. Hey, those things don't come with an instruction manuals (babies or diapers). I cleaned the baby off, taped the bottom side of the diaper to the baby with those tab things, then turned her over to tape the other end of the diaper, and . . .

Uh, oh. Uh, I guess I wasn't suppose to actually tape the diaper to the baby. Oops.

I used to babysit. I can kind of answer these, but if you're writing a babysitting series, you need to make sure it is unique and different because of the largely popular in the 90s Babysitters Club books

1). The most challenging is when you have the most kids. When you one kid under a year and one three year old and one five year old and the littlest one won't stop crying unless you hold onto her and the other two want you to play with them too (separate things may I add).

2) I don't really have any funny stories that I can think of.

3) It really depends on a factor of things like where you live, how many kids you have to watch, how long you watch them things like that.

misslissy said:

1). The most challenging is when you have the most kids. When you one kid under a year and one three year old and one five year old and the littlest one won't stop crying unless you hold onto her and the other two want you to play with them too (separate things may I add).

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Yes, I would agree with this one.

And after putting up with the crying baby for three hours, mom comes back and the baby will immediately stop crying as though nothing in the world was wrong.

By the way, I get out of babysitting these days by threatening to give the kids beer if someone leaves them with me. ;-)

I still love to babysit and it's good easy (at least in my opinion) money. But she wasn't crying as long as I held her.

I used to have the entire movie "The Sandlot" memorized. Every time I came over to babysit this one kid, he insisted we watch it...

Nothing livens up a quiet afternoon like a freaked out dog that goes through the electric fence and down the road. You know how hard it is to wrangle a kid who's flipping out while also trying to chase down a freaked out dog? Especially since the dog totally doesn't see you as any sort of authority.

I last babysat back in the early 90s, so my pay isn't even worth mentioning.

And, as someone else said, make sure you check out the Babysitter's Club books. While they're a little dated now, anything you write will be compared to it. You'll have to be different enough that people won't discard your stories as "been there, done that."

There's also the Adventures in Babysitting movie, but that is completely different from what the OP is planning to write.

The Babysitters Club books are still being published today with fresh hip new covers on them, so I presume they still sell well. On the other hand, they are early MG novels, not YA.

Funny babysitting story...I used to babysit the five kiddos next door (age 10, 8, 5, 2, and 2). This is the perfect number of children for complete uncontrolled chaos. I babysat them starting when i was 14 or so. I'm named Sarah, and the littlest one was named Sarah, so the whole family called me Big Sarah. Great for the self-esteem of a teenage girl, really. Bathtime was an epic ordeal. Afterwards I would dress the 2 yr old boy, then he would immediately strip and run naked through the house while I dressed the 2 yr old girl, then I'd have to chase him down, redress him, and give him a stern talking to.

The 8 yr old used to have a little pet frog (like a rainforest-looking one). I was dealing with some horrific intra-toddler conflict when I hear shouted across the house, "Big Sarah! My frog just threw up!" I am not trained in amphibian first aid so things did not really end well.

Other than that, uh, being thrown up on, cleaning up poopy pants, kids throwing spaghetti on the walls and ceiling, rubbing spaghetti in their hair...Oh! Caught one of the twins breaking raw eggs on the kitchen floor. He claimed to be looking for one that was hard-boiled--smart but naughty! Screaming for hours, refusing to go to bed, picking fights with each other, running off, hiding and not coming out, tormenting the cat, making the poor hapless babysitter watch Barney Live at Radio City Music Hall endless times, markers on the wall...

One time one of the kiddos was searching through a box of old stuff that never got unpacked from the move, They discovered a really weird thing--it was a colorful hand-knit cozy for the male genitalia. The kids all thought it was funny and they were trying to guess what it was. I was trying desperately to keep a straight face and praying that they wouldn't figure out what it was for. One of them guessed it, but I played dumb and they went on to other guesses.

Hope that helps. If I think of any other dramatic incidents, I'll post em.

Personally, I hated babysitting and would only do it if I was seriously guilted into it. So I don't have any great stories - except maybe the time I watched a teething baby for three hours and it cried the whole time - but, now that I'm a mom, I can tell you that babysitters can be costly.

I would pay $4-5/hour for someone to watch my two very easy girls, but I live in a small town. My sister-in-law lives just outside NYC and for someone to come watch her kids she'd have to pay $20/hour. No joke. Granted, she has four kids, but her neighbor pays $15/hour to watch their one little boy. When we lived in Seattle we would have paid in the $5-7 dollar range.

A lot of community centers, schools, and churches will offer CPR and First Aid classes for babysitters, as well as general babysitting training classes. Sometimes they are free, often come with a reasonable price tag. I know a number of moms who wouldn't consider anyone who hasn't taken these classes - I'm less strict about that sort of thing myself, as long as I know the babysitter very well.

Kitty Pryde said:

One time one of the kiddos was searching through a box of old stuff that never got unpacked from the move, They discovered a really weird thing--it was a colorful hand-knit cozy for the male genitalia. The kids all thought it was funny and they were trying to guess what it was. I was trying desperately to keep a straight face and praying that they wouldn't figure out what it was for. One of them guessed it, but I played dumb and they went on to other guesses.

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LOL

That was NOT a p***s warmer. It was hot mitt for a frying pan handle. Pans that have metal handles instead of plastic (or whatever that stuff is) can be used in the oven. The handle gets just as hot as the rest of the pan. Those little knitted or crocheted or made-from-quilted-material things are so you can get the pan out of the oven.

MM

Here's another one (I know I'm going to sound like I shouldn't be left alone with any child).

I once kept the son of a friend of him. He was five or six at the time. He had some kind of toy or game that used plastic money. We played around and just for fun I gave him some real coins; quarters, dimes, nickels. I didn't think anything about it.

When the boy got home and was playing with his mother, he said, "Watch this!" and put one of the nickels I'd given him into his mouth and swallowed it. Oh, great, his mother thought. Still, she didn't think it was a big thing; kids swallow coins and keys and all sorts of stuff. She took him to the doctor just to be safe. Apparently, it generally isn't a big deal if a child swallows a coin . . . unless the coin is a nickel. There is something bad about a nickel. According to the doctor, if a nickel doesn't pass in a day or two they go in and take it out.

Of course, I felt like a complete jerk when the boy's mother told me this. The boy really was old enough to know better. Still, I felt awful. Luckily, the nickel passed and there was no further problems.

Madisonwrites said:

Funny story. I read the back of this movie cover and thought it could be so much better. Actually, it kinda did give me the idea for this story, but because of some elements I have neglected (on purpose) to mention, my story is really nothing like it.

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I only remember the movie in a vague way. The one scene I do remember is when the girl lost her glasses and found a small animal. She thought it was a cute little kitten. Turned out it was a sewer rat.

MaryMumsy said:

LOL

That was NOT a p***s warmer. It was hot mitt for a frying pan handle. Pans that have metal handles instead of plastic (or whatever that stuff is) can be used in the oven. The handle gets just as hot as the rest of the pan. Those little knitted or crocheted or made-from-quilted-material things are so you can get the pan out of the oven.

MM

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No, seriously! It wasn't just meant to hold one thing. There was room for the twig AND the berries, or the meat and two veg, if you will. The whole shebang. Also, mom and dad were really embarrassed when they came home and found the kids had discovered it.

I get paid about ten bucks an hour to watch the neighbor's kids. The most challenging thing about babysitting I find is getting them to listen (more for younger kids). They never want to listen, jumping on couches, harrassing the dog, you know, that sort of thing. Funny stories? Let's see... Well, there was the one time I caught the boy taking swewing pins and sticking them in his mattress and stuffed animals. Well, not really funny. I kind of worry about that kid....The look on his face when I caught him though was priceless.

Haha, funny story...Let's see...

I was having a very difficult time getting a four-year-old to go to bed. She just wouldn't listen. She kept jumping on the couch and watching tv, and I kept bringing her back to her room and telling her to go to sleep. Finally her older brother, who had been watching this for about thirty minutes, said, "I know how to rig her door so it keeps her locked in. You just take some string..." And he proceeded to tell me how to keep her in her room.

It was funnier than it sounds.

This is a great thread... It's been a looong time, but I seem to remember the pay depending somewhat on how much the parents had to drink while they were gone. Once I got a hundred bucks for six hours...

I used to get paid $12/hr for five kiddos in Oregon around 1995-2000ish. I used to get $20/hr for baby + little kid in California around 2004, and $15/hr for one extremely well-behaved and happy kiddo with autism in California. If it's a wealthy area, you can ask for more, if not, expect less. If there are lots of teenagers around, your price might need to be lower---supply and demand, don't you know.

Tricks for extra money: If the kid did something really bad or I had to clean up something gross, I always used to mention the incident RIGHT when the money was coming out of the wallet to pay me. And it was usually good for an extra $5, $10, or $20, depending on how atrocious it was. A tantrum was worth about $10, cleaning poo off the floor was worth $20, because parents are afraid to lose a good babysitter so they try to appease. (Um, I'm not a bad person, I swear! I never made up tales of tragedy for extra dough...) Also, you can tend to get extra if, say, you cleaned up all the toys in the playroom (without being asked), and you manage to be standing in said newly-tidied playroom when you get paid.

I'm old enough to have grandchildren, so my babysitting years are far behind me. However I remember a few stories:

One family had a beagle that ran away every time I came over. He'd slither out the door as the parents left or jump the fence in the back yard as soon as they drove off. I remember always having to chase down the street after their dog.

I had one little boy who was AWFUL about going to bed. So I'd go around the house and set the clocks back an hour. I'd let him think that he was getting to stay up an hour later and he was much more cooperative about bedtime. Hopefully I always remembered to set the clocks back again.

Once I was looking for a snack in the pantry and found the parent's stash of weed.

Parents loved me because I'd always get the kids to play a clean up game before bed. I'd give each kid a basket and we'd have a race to see who could pick up the most toys in 2 minutes. (There were no prizes) The parents loved coming home to see the house relatively tidy.

I also remember watching a scary movie one night after the kids went to bed and screaming my head off when the parents came home because I was so spooked.

Poop and mess and tantrums come with the job, however, I remember only two really bad things happening:
Once the husband of a family I sat for tried to hit on me on the drive home. I never sat for them again.
Another time, a teenage boy who also babysat in the same neighborhood didn't like me as competition. He began telling families I was a child abuser. Turns out, he was molesting one of his charges and was arrested.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your story.

PS - love the story about the willie warmer!

Kitty Pryde said:

No, seriously! It wasn't just meant to hold one thing. There was room for the twig AND the berries, or the meat and two veg, if you will. The whole shebang. Also, mom and dad were really embarrassed when they came home and found the kids had discovered it.

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I thought I had seen everything, but I have never seen one like that.

MM

The most challenging thing in babysitting for me is to keep an eye on the kid/s. Especially when they are hyper and getting into various things - worse if there is more than one child. X.x; I love the idea of "time out" sometimes. LOL

Here's a funny story: My 1 1/2 year nephew is the only child I have babysat that has done this one. My mother and I were both babysitting him and we were playing with stuffed toys. He picks up a stuffed crocodile and thrusts its bum in my mother's face. We were goofing off and my mother acted like the crocodile's bum stunk. My nephew took the crocodile, looked at its bum, and then squeezed the crocodile over an open hand. He pointed at the open hand and started gagging and saying eww. My mother and I were confused. He pointed at the open hand again and said, "Poop!"
And thus the tale of the start of the imagainary poop.
My nephew only does that with the crocodile too. He has a puppy and lots of other toys, but apparently only the crocodile can "poo" on command.

I taught my then 1 1/2 year old nephew to wave at ants (or all crawly bugs) and say "Hi ants!" Unintentionally actually. We were out in the driveway and he asked what they were. I told him they were ants and said "Hi ants!"

For months, he would stop when he saw any bugs and say "Hi ants!" (It still makes me giggle to recall it.)

Oh and another tale-- my nephew has a really, really tolerant cat. When he was only two or three, he would like to play with the cat. So sometimes, he'd grab the cat to pick her up and bring her to where he was playing. Only, the cat's decent sized, and a little fat. So, nephew would grab two big handfuls of cat (fur and skin) and try to cart her off that way, unless busted by authority. The cat never meowed or scratched. Just got this LOOK. Kind of like this cat...