Parents

Who Watches Your Kids?

Posted Friday, October 19th, 2007 and visited 344 times, 2 so far today
by MInTheGap

Thank you for visiting Weekend Kindness-- the blog that helps you build positive relationships! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don't miss a single post from one of our great authors!

kids blanket One of the most difficult things that I have found with being the parent of young children is that getting out of the house has become a major undertaking.  With an infant who’s crawling and getting into everything, you can’t trust a young teenager to watch them and you two older children.

And getting two babysitters just doesn’t seem to make any sense!

So, what options are you left with?  For us, it’s my parents, but they live a good half hour away.  My church’s teen population is limited to younger teen girls.  Most of the other moms that have children have younger ones as well.

Here are some of the ideas that we have thought of:

  • Try to get referrals from people in other churches with older teen girls.
  • Take on two teen girls at a time.
  • Split up the children to multiple care givers.
  • Form a parent co-op where parents (with a teen helper) take turns watching the kids.

Can you think of any others?


MInTheGap has been commenting on the culture at large and current events since 2004. He enjoys spending time with his family, writing, and being active in his local church.
Visit This Author's Website

Tags

[?]
It’s Time to Make a Sign
Parenting Links

Related Posts



3 Responses to “Who Watches Your Kids?”

  1. MyAvatars 0.2 Mary Says:
    October 25th, 2007 at 4:27 pm Subscribed to Comments

    Isn’t this the million dollar question? I have nieces the right age, thankfully, but still, dh and I are rarely able to afford to pay them what we feel they deserve (our children are worth a LOT to us!) and also to be able to go out on the town on a regular basis. So about once a year we plan an overnight away and get my niece to come spend the night. My husband’s parents would be our obvious choice, first it would be free, second the kids’ favorite place ever would be to spend the night at Grandma’s, but they’re just not the “having grandkids over to spend the night” kind of grandparents.

    I was talking with a friend the other day, and she said her husband told her the perfect Christmas gift would be for someone in the family to offer babysitting once a month for the year ahead so he could take her out on a date. Aw, so sweet!! Well, she and I were talking and decided we should take turns watching each other’s kids, even if it was every six months. Our kids are great friends, and we have very similar value systems in place. It wouldn’t be an overnight, but do you and your wife have friends you could work out a deal with in this way?

    I love the sounds of it…this way you have two adults to monitor everyone, plus the older kids have friends to play with.

  2. MyAvatars 0.2 MInTheGap Says:
    November 6th, 2007 at 1:47 pm

    We’ve thought about doing the family friends, but the closest we have to friends have three kids of their own, approximately the same age. A 7 year old and 5 kids under 5 could be a lot of work either way!

Trackbacks

  1. Weekend Kindness » Watch the Fat