Babysitter
Description:
I simply made a service that entitled me babysitting for people I know. If someone needed a babysitter, I made myself available to be of service to them. My friend and I did this together so that we could help each other out while making money and still having fun and spending time with each other. I had huge responsibilities because I was responsible for another human life. My duties were to feed babies, change diapers, play with them, make sure everything is safe and going right and to overall just take care of whatever the baby/child needs. In order to be in this business, you would need to have a love for children and a lot of patience and tenderness to you. You need to make sure that you feel comfortable being alone in a house with a child while taking care of its every need.
How I got the idea / found the employment:
One weekend, my mom’s friend was going to go out on a date with her husband and wanted to ask my mom if she could babysit. My mom was busy that night but recommended that I babysit the child because I was also good with kids. I babysat for my mom’s friend that weekend and everything turned out great. My mom’s friend then later recommended me to her friends and that’s how my business gained its customers. I started off my charging rate at $3.00 an hour then later when I became really experienced ending up bumping up the price to $7.00-$10.00 an hour.
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:
One major challenge I faced was If something went wrong while I was babysitting. For example, one time the baby started getting sick and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to panic but I knew that it wouldn’t fix anything. So, I first called my mom and asked for her advice. Then, I called the baby’s parents and told them what was going on but to not worry because it was nothing too serious. Third, I followed the instructions that the parents gave me over the phone to settle down the baby until the parents got home. In a situation like this, there is no need to panic, but there is a need to quickly realize what needs to happen to fix the situation.
What I learned:
During this business that I had, I learned many skills from taking care of my responsibilities to taking care of a child. I learned a lot about being a mother and how to properly take care of a child and what the child does or does not need. This experience will help me a lot in the future when I decided to start my own family because I will know the right and wrong things to do. Some benefits of this were making money, learning about motherhood, growing up responsibly and maturing in a motherly state. Although I didn’t have any children when I was running my little business, I know that it will help me tremendously in the future for myself and others.
Baby-Sitter
Description:
I was a baby-sitter at the age of 15 for a family with six kids under the age of 9. I even remember some of their names: Jarek, Haley, Seth, Mitchell, and Tegan, the youngest. Two of them, Seth and Haley, had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd). I have five kids in my own family and I also have to deal with adhd so I felt like it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I babysat at night, so I had to feed them dinner and put them to bed, then I could usually rest and do my own homework. Even though it was a lot of work just to take care of the kids, I thought it must be hard for them to do it everyday so often after they went to bed, I cleaned up their kitchen and living room. I tried to keep everything looking tidy when they came home-I considered it an extra service. It was a lot of fun and the kids thought I was so great the parents called me to baby-sit for them the following week. The father told me that sometimes when getting the kids to eat their meals, he would say, “If you don’t eat all of it, Michelle won’t babysit for you next time,” and that apparently made them upset! I continually got called as a regular baby-sitter because of my availability. I was paid $20 each time (no matter the hours) and when I had a particularly bad night, they doubled my pay. It began to be something I could depend on for money.
How I got the idea / found the employment:
The father and mother of these kids, who were rather wild and unruly, were quite the opposite: very quiet, kind and soft-spoken. The father was in our bishopric, so it was hard for a lot of people to imagine how they’d ended up with such kids. No one wanted to baby-sit for them. I advertised to the ward (basically I told my mom and she let the relief society know; I think I might have also put flyers on the ward bulletin) that I was interested in babysitting and when they contacted me, they were thrilled I was willing to babysit for them. I remember my mom even warned me about dealing with them. I thought about my own babysitting experiences and remember that my favorite was a girl that brought a bag full of games and snacks and toys for us to play with. I called it a “surprise bag” and I decided to copy the idea. Of course, the first time I brought snacks, I hadn’t realized the parents might not approve, so I had to alter that for the next time. They allowed small snacks after dinner was eaten.
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:
The second or third time around was particularly a challenge because the adhd kids were really acting up. The most difficult part of the job was coming back: I wasn’t joking about the fact that the kids had a reputation and almost no one liked babysitting them. This night, Seth was a pill and what made it worse was that Mitchell was trying to be just like his brother, so I had to deal with the two of them. He locked me out of the house, threw big heavy stuff at me while I was holding the baby, called me names, pulled down their pants and jumped off the stairs near me. I think part of the reason I got paid double was because they threw a permanent marker at my shirt. In order to get them to calm down and stay in one place, I put them on either side of me and held their hands to keep them sitting and I said I wasn’t going to let go if they were going to lay on the floor and scream and be wild. It took a long time, but they finally calmed down enough that I could let go. It was particularly hard after this time to come back, but I did and it was good because I got to see them how they usually were and it was like they hadn’t been bad. It was good experience for me to learn how to deal with children that I couldn’t necessarily control on my own. The whole process was very creative and insightful.
What I learned:
I learned how to network, because I obviously became a regular. I also learned that I could enjoy my work. I learned that I needed to keep doing it even though sometimes I didn’t want to and I looked for additional things to do to help those I was working for. I especially learned patience: it was amazing how calm I sometimes felt when they were upset or acting up. I couldn't just yell at them like I did with other people. It was a great experience and it gave me a peak into how I could deal with being a mother. I still see them every once in a while (they are in a different ward) and its crazy to see how grown up they are (I think the oldest is halfway through high school now). I felt like I became part of their family.
Babysitting
Description:
I wish I would have turned this into something bigger, but I never made enough time for it. I was always involved in so many other activities while in high school, but the job I usually had on the weekends was babysitting. This was mostly a ward thing. I’m sure we could have babysat other kids, but my friends and I always babysat for the children in our ward. We wanted parents to have the opportunity to go out on dates.
My two friends and I decided we would go up to people and ask them if they wanted us to babysit their children. Sometimes we would do it individually and other times we would all get together and watch the kids. We all loved kids and were known to be great babysitters. It became easier and easier to get a babysitting job when the parents started trusting us more and more. We tried to be fun, but at the same time we knew it was important to not let the kids walk all over us. Kids can be very manipulative when they’re trying to get what they want from someone other than mom and dad.
As I said, it was just me and a few of my friends. None of us was in charge and we didn’t hire people to work for us. That is why I categorized this as employment. If someone is interested in starting a babysitting career while in high school, the best place to start is with church members and you can always branch out and have your parents talk to their co-workers. This is a great job because it only requires a little bit of your time, there are plenty of snacks, and all you have to do is keep the children entertained.
How I got the idea / found the employment:
I’m not sure what it is about young women in the church, but it seems like we all love children. That’s how our idea came together. Two of my friends and I loved watching children so we decided to go up to different families in the ward and ask them if they would like to have us babysit for them. They always said yes. Parents want to go on dates too, but turns out it’s sometimes hard to get a hold of a good babysitter.
Luckily the children we babysat on a regular basis loved having us come over. They usually got very excited when they found out one or all of us would be coming over to watch them while mom and date went out. We were evening invited to a few birthday parties (that’s how much we were liked).
Of course this only went on until about our junior or senior year. We didn’t keep it up for very long. Once we all started dating, we didn’t want to spend our weekend nights babysitting.
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:
One of the hardest parts about babysitting was coming up with an activity to do with the children. Getting a child to watch a whole movie is a task all of its own. They have a very short attention span. So really, they can only sit there for a good 40 minutes before they start getting fussy, start fighting with each other, or running around. Kids will never sit still for very long.
My friends and I would make up a list of things we could do with the children either before we arrived at the house or we would take a few minutes as soon as we arrived to come up with a game plan. We would do things such as play hide and go seek, color, bake, watch a movie (or part of one), play with tons, etc.
Another challenge we often faced were screaming kids and brothers who liked to beat each other up. It is very difficult to get children to get along especially when they’re related. To get them to stop fighting we would ask them if they wanted to play a game or just have them do completely different things for a little while.
The third challenge we faced was food. Sometimes they didn’t want to eat dinner; all they wanted was candy. I found that having them help “the babysitters” cook was the best way to go about this. As long as they had an input they would usually eat most of their dinner.
What I learned:
I learned that patience is very important and that any idea can turn into a great idea. The only regret I have is that I wished I would have put more effort and maybe started a mini babysitting business. We could have had someone be in charge and we could have made flyers. But since we were all busy doing other things, babysitting was not something we could just do whenever we wanted. We also had our school work to look after.
I really enjoyed what my friends and I started and I have lots of stories from the different experiences I had. The benefits I have seen from doing what we actually did was getting closer to the people in the ward. And that is something that should be important to everyone. I also became very close to my friends and we still have a very strong bond even today.
Babysitting
Description:
The service provided for the employment was just as stated above, baby sitting. However, this was a different project because I actually marketed myself and earned quite a bit of money for a teenager. Babysitting can be a very lucrative job it done correctly because most parents pay about 7 to 10 dollars an hour, which in my hometown was much more than your average fast food job, and I also did most of this babysitting while still between the ages of 13-15. I was self employed, but I had many clients. I was able to earn q large cliental through word of mouth and very small advertisements provided by myself. The secret to being a babysitter and getting a large cliental and becoming valuable is appealing to both parents and children. If the kids appreciate you then they will ask for you again and likewise if the parents respect and like you then you will be hired again and the parents will also recommend you to other parents.
How I got the idea / found the employment:
: I didn�t really get the idea for this employment, someone from my ward just asked me one day if I could baby-sit then I had the idea that I could earn a lot of money from this venture. I made a �babysitting kit� that I brought with me to appointments which had games, activities, emergency supplies and other materials to not only make the time enjoyable for the children but to show that I was prepared for whatever might happen while the children were in my care. By being creative and following the
parents orders while still making the time fun for the kids I kept the current employment. I also asked them to recommend my to their friends, and I talked to people in my community and at church and let them know that I was available to watch their kids. Lastly, I marketed myself by telling my parents to spread the word as well as friends of the family. By networking and using the resources I had available I was able to get at least two babysitting jobs a week for several hours. And a steady 9hour babysitting job in the summer months.
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:
Some of the challenges with babysitting are of course difficult children who don�t listen to the babysitter because they are not they�re parents. As a result it is difficult to maintain authority and friendliness, but above all you must follow the parent�s instructions and not let the kids misbehave or get into trouble.
What I learned:
This experience was useful because I was able to appreciate families more as well as being able to experience authority and control of a situation that I could have potentially lost that control. Through this experience I also learned how to take direction and self-motivation. I learned how to network with people I know and use the resources I already had at my fingertips. Lastly I felt ready to be employed in a larger company/group and I had valuable experience to help me achieve that goal.
Babysitting
Description:
On most Friday and Saturdays nights, I would babysit for families I knew in the community or families from my ward at church. Before I could drive, they would pick me up and drop me off. I would watch over their kids: play with them, feed them, get them ready for bed, read to them, and put them to sleep. This was a great chance for most parents to go out on a date or errands and spend time alone without the hassle and stresses of children. This job was very flexible due to my intense schedule during high school between advanced classes at school, homework, dance team for school, dance studio, family responsibilities, church activities, callings and responsibilities and a social life. Babysitting is very flexible so I had the chance to do it on the weekends and whenever it was most convenient in my schedule.
How I got the idea / found the employment:
When I was 12 years old, my mother suggested that I start to learn about babysitting. She talked to a woman in my ward at church about helping out with her two little girls while she was home a few afternoons. So the mom would stay home incase I had questions or concerns, but I would play with and take care of the girls. As time passed, she referred my name to many other moms she knew and they would call my sister and I to help out. By the time I was thirteen, I had enough practice to watch children without the supervision of their parents for several hours. I mostly got babysitting jobs through the word of mouth. People in the ward who were new would ask other moms about who babysat and my name always came up.
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:
Babysitting is a challenging task. Kids are not always on their best behavior or very cooperative especially if it is your first time watching them. They believe they can get away with anything. The most challenging part for me was I mostly babysat newborns, infants and toddlers. They are so much more precious, innocent and need much more attention and care. I remember one experience I had which was so difficult. There was a family with four kids and the last was a baby girl who was probably around 4-5 months old. One evening when I was probably around fourteen, my sister and I went to babysit on a Friday night. The mom did not warn us but the baby was a cholic baby which meant that she cried and cried and cried no matter what we did. My sister and I took turns holding her, comforting her, feeding her, rocking her, and reading and singing to her. Nothing seemed to help. I remember we called our mom asking her what to do. After several hours of screaming, the baby girl finally tired herself out to fall asleep. I learned from this time forward to ask the parents about specifics with their children concerning behaviors, bedtimes and routines. This made it so much easier on myself. I also could use the experience built from the experience with difficult children in later babysitting jobs so I knew what to do better. With every child and situation it is different, but I was ability to use my skills and experience to deal with whatever was thrown my way.
What I learned:
From the time I was 12 to the time I left for college at 18, I have babysat. Overall, I would estimate that I have babysat for over 30 families in my time: some just once or twice and some very regularly. Babysitting can be hard and challenging when you do not know the kids very well, but it has taught me so many lessons. First of all and for most, it has taught me how to care for children ages infant to preteens. It has allowed me to learn how to feed, take care, and deal with the everyday concerns and duties of being a mom. This has given me so much insight and experience for the time that I am one day a mother. Secondly, it has taught me to put the needs of others before my own. No matter how tired I was or whether the children were misbehaving, I had to do what I was getting paid to do whether I felt like it or not. And after babysitting some families for many years, I had developed fun and positive relationships with the kids.
Weekly Babysitting (Same Family)
Description:
My job carried more responsibility than most babysitting jobs typically do as I was expected to carry out different duties as well as house rules as I was someone that the kids saw frequently.
I not only watched the kids and helped entertain them, but I was also expected to follow through with punishments and rewards that their parents were currently employing for certain behaviors. This covered from ‘not saying certain words’, hitting, or disobeying house rules to giving rewards or positive feedback when the kids were helpful, did as they were told, or carried out a specific behavior the parents were trying to teach them (such as potty training). Both rewards and punishments were expected to be on the line of what the parents would do if they were home, for example, sitting in the corner after an tantrum or being placed in their own room alone until they could come out and apologize to the other sibling.
I also was often in charge of preparing meals, cleaning up after meals, and I worked on also cleaning up after some of the ‘messes’ we made when we played with toys. Because I was more regular, I also was asked to follow TV /movie times (a half hour a day for her kids) as well along with other daily activities there parents were teaching them to get in habit with. I also observed nap times, procedures for getting ready for bedtime, and even bed times.
How I got the idea / found the employment:
When I began babysitting, I actually started by giving out my services for free – usually to my next door neighbors – with my brother for their three, later four, kids. They would every so often award us with money, and sometimes we would serve them for free. As time progressed, we eventually became their irregular (and paid) babysitters and they helped spread our names – as we had a ‘two’ at the price of ‘one’ offering. Eventually I split off and started babysitting on my own separate from my brother (now that I was a little older and didn’t need my brother with me). At that time I began actively moving to find more jobs, signing up in my Church as a candidate for babysitting, as well as taking every opportunity I had to babysit. I worked hard on the job and focused primarily on playing and doing things with the kids rather than watching the TV and letting them do their own thing as well as cleaning up after messes we had made when I could. This helped me build a good reputation on my name.
The reason I give this background is because I wanted to highlight the fact that I didn’t just suddenly stumble on this job. I had been working as a babysitter for a couple of years, and for multiple families. By building up this background, and gaining good ‘connections’ with the Moms’, my name was introduced to my future ‘employer’ – Mrs. S., for the sake of this paper. She called me and asked if I was interested and then further asked if she could interview me. This took me by surprise, but I accepted. It was only I had babysat for her for a couple of months, on an irregular basis, that she finally said that she had been looking for someone that she could call more regularly. Because of how hard I was working, and that I followed the directions she left, and her son liked me and had fun with me, she asked if I would be interested in doing something more regular – and so I became her weekly babysitter.
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:
Some challenges I faced were: learning how to follow through with punishments, to put aside my own frustrations while I was working with the kids while they were being bad, and keep weekly commitments even when more enjoyable things arose.
When I was first talked to by Mrs. S. about some fits her little boy had been going through (anger tantrums, saying things like “I hate”, or refusing to do as he was told), I felt really uneasy. When I babysat other kids, where it was not as important to follow through with rules like their parents, I always struggled knowing how to deal with the kids when they were bad but I developed a method of taking the troublemaker aside and having them sit in one spot until they were calmed down – with or without my help. However, Mrs. S. had a few additional things that she did to help teach her sons what was right and what was bad, and asked, as the kids saw me so often, that I would also do them. Some of the things would make the kids really upset with me, which took a long time to get used to, but I always kept in mind that this is both what the parents wanted and also what would help teach the kids to eventually be good or bad.
That didn’t always make things easy, however, and there were times when I felt a lot of frustration with the situation I was in. I would separate myself from the kids, putting in their room for a short while or preparing a meal (while still keeping them in sight). This small break would give me time to think over what I needed to do and how it would be best to handle the situation. Usually the small break, only a couple minutes at most, was what I needed. Still, if it wasn’t, I made a new rule – which I talked to Mrs. S.’s older son about, as he was the only one old enough to understand at the time. If I got angry with the kids, or seemed upset, I said they could say I needed a time out (though it was a little different then the time out the kids got). This required me to explain why they sometimes had to go into time out, but I was surprised by how well it turned out in the end. After I had implemented it, It actually helped decrease the amount of trouble I had with the kids as they seemed to agree that if I couldn’t do it then it made sense they shouldn’t either. It also seemed to help me find amusement in situations that normally would get me frustrated when the little boy would remind me that if I wasn’t going to be nice I would have to have a time out. I wouldn’t advise this babysitting rule with all kids, but the kids I was working with were passive enough that it did the trick.
The final thing that I remember being hard about the job was that as I entered into highschool, I sometimes had events rise with friends that I really wanted to go to – often last moment – and more than once during the time when I had babysitting. It was really tempting to call Mrs. S. and ask if we could rearrange our schedule and say that ‘something came up’. The decision to not do this ended up having to be a personal one, though I am sure advice from my mother helped me decide to do the right thing. Finally, I decided that if I had made a commitment than I would stick to it. Once I had made the decision, and told myself that was what I was going to do, it made it easier to hold to babysitting appointments I had scheduled ahead. I still was sad when I couldn’t make it to other activities that arouse, but things worked out in the end – friends were still friends, and I was able to keep a job that helped me through high school.
What I learned:
One of the most important things I learned from this job is responsibility. Each week I was in charge of moving about my schedule so that I would have a compatible time open that worked for Mrs. S as well. Once I made commitments I had to keep them, which was sometimes hard as I had plans come up with friends that I would have to forego – or some days I would just wouldn’t feel in the mood but was still committed into babysitting. I also had to learn the responsibility of watching kids for that long, as well as my own actions and how important it was to always be keeping an eye on the kids. The biggest responsibility that I learned, however, was that I had to make sure that the rules I set down for the kids I kept myself as well, which meant I had to monitor my activities and make sure I was keeping the house rules at all times and standing as an example to the kids of what was acceptable.
I also learned the value of hard work, and rather than slacking off when it was getting ‘boring’ playing with the kids and putting on a movie longer than I had been asked to, I had to focus down and find new games and things to do with the kids. This helped me in more than one way. I learned to be more creative and to be dedicated to my responsibilities. I grew closer to the kid’s, and developed a very good relationship with the entire family. This job did, in a sense, become ‘work’ but it was one that I enjoyed and tried hard in to help the kids enjoy the time I spent with them. In the end, this hard work paid off as I realized near the end of my employment. I looked back at my hourly wage and realized that it had been slowly and steadily increasing during the time I had worked with the family. It was a good feeling when I realized that Mrs. S. had been subtly giving me raises.
So, overall, the most important values that I learned from this experience was being responsible for my actions and also learning to work hard and being creative with the time that was given to me. It was a good experience to have a consist line of work that didn’t interfere to much with school but still allowed me to gain some hands on experience of what it is like to be employed.