It’s the holidays, and people are attending parties and socializing. For parents with young children, going out means someone has to watch the little ones.
Some are lucky enough to live close by a relative who’s happy to watch the kiddos. Usually there’s a give-and-take arrangement – you watch mine this time, I’ll watch yours the next.
Others have an older sibling who can watch the younger ones. That was the case in our house. I was the oldest, and many times I babysat my brothers and sisters.
I like to think I was a benevolent, kind babysitter who let them watch hours of television and do whatever they wanted. The truth is I was probably a ruthless dictator.
They’d have been better off with a drill sergeant.
Many weekends, I babysit for other families for the sum of 50 cents an hour. It didn’t matter how many kids I babysat, the price was always the same.
Most of the parents I sat for came home at a reasonable hour which was great because all the television stations went off the air at midnight. There wasn’t any cable, streaming services, VCRs or DVD players.
There was no Sirius radio or an FM station on the air. The only radio signal was from an AM station. After the sun went down, their signal got weaker, so it was hard to find something to do after the kiddos were sleeping.
After hearing “The Star Spangled Banner,” while the American flag waved on the screen, it was tough to stay awake.
After going to school all day, those parents who stayed out until two in the morning usually found me sleeping on the couch.
My husband and I didn’t have family near us after we moved to Texas and we had to pay babysitters. We usually used the older sister or brother of one of our son’s friends. That worked for a while until the word got around that our boys were a bit harder to control.
Luckily, we found Vanessa. She was a calm, mature, wonderful teenager who handled the boys better than I did. We paid Vanessa double her asking price because we knew she was worth every penny.
When Vanessa went off to college, I hired the oldest son of one of our friends. He was on the football team, and the boys enjoyed throwing the football in the back yard and shooting hoops with him.
Best of all, he was three feet taller than they were and outweighed them by 100 pounds. The boys were a bit intimidated. We were relieved.
These days, the qualifications for a babysitter are a lot higher. Parents want babysitters to be Red Cross certified. They want the sitter to know CPR and how to handle any type of emergency.
Some of the other requirements include helping with homework and knowing how to engage the children in fun learning activities. Knowing a second language is a bonus.
The price has gone up – good babysitters can now command anywhere from $10 to $30 an hour.
That sure makes staying home, watching a streaming service and popping your own popcorn in the microwave a lot more appealing for parents.
Put the kiddos to bed, sit back in the recliner in your pajamas and enjoy the evening for a lot less money than you’d pay a teenager or owe your sister-in-law an evening of watching your kids and hers.
Babysitting taught me a lot.
Kids can be holy terrors.
Kids can be sweet, as long as they’re open to bribes.
And when I got to be a parent, I’d tip the babysitter at least twice what he or she asked for.
They would earn it.
I know I did.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.