Adventures in Babysitting!

Let's talk babysitters: the unsung heroes of date nights, holiday parties, and parents’ much-needed sanity breaks! 

In this episode we're talking about what makes a babysitter great (spoiler: it’s not bossing kids around) and why babysitting is a fantastic first job for teens. From life-saving CPR training to the subtle art of earning a kid’s respect, there’s a lot to it! 

And did you know babysitting certification is a thing? Yep, it sure is! Those young savior's of our sanity can get a little professional training before jumping in with both feet. Trust us, we know first hand because our daughter and her Girl Scout troop have their babysitting certifications - and they learned a lot!

Whether you're a parent reminiscing about your own childhood sitters (the good, the bad, and the “we survived”), or on the hunt for the next beloved babysitter, this episode has some great tips and practical advice for you. Download and listen in today!

Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.

Transcript

Jimmy: 0:23

Hey, what's happening? It's your boy, jimmy, and along with Megs, for another life and safety podcast, today's an interesting one. We're going to talk about babysitters and babysitting. Did you know there are babysitting courses?

Megan: 0:39

I did not know that.

Jimmy: 0:40

Yeah, you can actually become certified to be a babysitter and it's from, I I believe, 12 years old to 18 years old. There's specific babysitting classes. You can either take them from the red cross or your folks at life safety were certified to teach those classes. In those classes you would learn just some barely some baby blah, some baby basics. I guess what I was trying to say. You know how to change diapers, what are age-appropriate things for kids to play with and, of course, cpr AD and some basic first aid.

Jimmy: 1:22

We actually got into this because of my daughter's Girl Scout troop. They were raising money I believe this was for their Thailand trip or their Hawaii trip, I'm not sure. I think it was their Thailand trip and they were trying to figure out, like how they can raise more money Other than selling cookies and doing things like that. So they decided to become babysitters and because they like children and they were like, well, how do we make the most money and we need to be CPR 80 certified anyways for Girl Scouts. So we looked into it and we found the Health Safety Institute, the governing body that we issue a lot of our certificates through, offers a class. I just had to take an instructor course, which was interesting. I think it was 12 hours so I can teach it. I actually took that one and I was unable to certify to teach the girls to certify the girls to be girls babysitters cool, it was cool.

Jimmy: 2:39

It was cool. So that got me to thinking. I was talking to megan on a previous podcast about kind of how I can't I don't know the word I'm looking for incorrigible me and my brother and sister word when it came to babysitters.

Jimmy: 3:00

Um, I don't think a lot of the stories we can tell are PG rated or G rated Even we were pretty mean kids, um. So we'll tell a couple stories and then we'll kind of talk about you know some of the circumstances. You know why babysitters are good. I'll still say it that way, right? Um, so why babysitters are good, and I think that it's important for parents to use them. I think it's good, so that way the mom and dad can have their relationship.

Jimmy: 3:38

Go out and, especially with the holiday times coming out, maybe go to a cocktail party, maybe go to a friend's house and have some snacks and hors d'oeuvres or whatever it is. Go to a friend's house and have some snacks and hors d'oeuvres or whatever it is, and doing that, in my opinion, helps your kid or a kid learn responsibility and learn how to be disciplined from another person. So think of interacting with anybody of authority. If you only interact with your parents, you know how to act with your parents. So if you're gonna act bratty with your parents, you're probably gonna bratty with the person of authority. Okay, now, yeah, that's my opinion. So I think if the person, the child, has more people that they interact with, I think it's just better. Okay.

Jimmy: 4:32

Now, if you're the person doing the babysitting, I think it's important for you to understand the responsibility, how hard it is to babysit, to look out after somebody else's human right for however many hours. Now, sometimes those babysitters are really good and sometimes those babysitters are not so good. One of the best babysitter we ever had I think her name was Carrie and she hung out with us and she when I say us, me and my brother and my sister I'm the oldest and she would literally just like hang out with us and play with us. You know what I mean.

Jimmy: 5:27

Like she was like one of us, so it was cool to hang out with her and to listen to her because she kind of earned our respect, Whereas some others, even though they're a couple years older than me, would come in and say you need to do what I said because I'm the boss. Oh yeah, that didn't go over good.

Megan: 5:46

I'm sure.

Jimmy: 5:52

I like being the boss, my sister likes being the boss, my sister likes being the boss, my brother likes being the boss. So it's hard when somebody comes in and tells us they need to be the boss.

Megan: 6:03

Yeah, I can't picture that going over well at all.

Jimmy: 6:07

No, definitely not, Definitely not. So what are? So? Those are kind of some goods and bads. You know that I kind of dealt with like what would be a good trait that you and megan doesn't have any children, um, um, so if you had to entrust your cat to be cat sat right, your cat sitter, same kind of thing ish, like with a baby, you know, for babies, for some people, um, what do you think is like some of those good traits that you would want to look for?

Megan: 6:50

um, I mean definitely like responsible and trustworthy.

Megan: 6:53

Like I have to be able to trust that they're going to show up and do what they said that they would do. You know, for, like cat sitting, like you know trust that they're going to show up twice a day, or whatever it is, and feed the cats and maybe, you know, change the water and clean the litter box or whatever it is. Um, and trust that they're going to, you know, get done what they said that they would get done. Um, obviously, with a human baby. Um, trust that they're going to, you know, stay attentive to the child feed.

Megan: 7:28

You know you hear the horror stories of, like the babysitter who, like locks herself in or himself in the room and just like plays on their phone the whole time and ignores the child and doesn't help or anything like that. Like so trustworthy that they're gonna do what was agreed upon because you're not there to like watch them and monitor them and make sure that they do that sure there's nothing scary movies yeah where the babysitter brings the boyfriend over and bad things for to happen yeah or they answer the phone and you know bad things.

Megan: 8:03

Do you want to play a game?

Jimmy: 8:06

yeah yeah yeah, um.

Jimmy: 8:11

So I want to just echo you know how to find a good babysitter. Family friends you know, family friends with teenagers Ask. You know, are they willing to spend you know a couple hours? Do they want to make a couple bucks hanging out? You know it's really good. And your kids if you want to get them into babysitting, check out our. You know reach really good. And your kids if you want to get them into babysitting, check out our. You know, reach out to us. Email at lifesafetycom and see about getting a life babysitting class. Going on that note, thanks, be safe and we'll catch you on the next one.