Last week I babysat for two wonderful kids, a boy aged 7, and a girl aged 4 (nearly 5 – as she told me all night!).

It’s been about 5 years since I babysat kids that age.

I arrived at 5pm and the kids were hiding in the closet…playing of course! I brought pizza with me and that lured them out as it is one of their favourite foods! (good choice!)

Their mom set them up at the table and they started eating, then she went over the list with me.

• 5-6 dinner
• 6-7 quiet play
• 7-7:30 teeth, pyjamas, bed.

Simple as that.

The parents left not long after I arrived and I sat with the kids to eat some pizza too.

Dinner was relatively quiet as we observed each other. But once dinner was finished and the plates stacked in the dishwasher Brother suggested a game he has in his room for us to play.

Absolutely, I said, go get it and we’ll play.

I’d also brought with me some coloured pencils, a sharpener, and three colouring books in case we needed something else to do.

The game, a memory match game with Marvel characters, came down with excited talk from Brother about how to play and how great it was, and how great he was at the game!

So we started playing.

Both kids cheated, and the direction in which we were playing went back and forth as I missed turn after turn! I had a moment of wondering if I should call them on it, keep control of the game, make them follow the rules, and wait their turn.

I still wonder if that is the “right” thing to do as a babysitter, or even as a parent.

In this case, I didn’t do that because a) I’m not competitive at all myself so it totally didn’t matter to me if I had a turn or not, and b) they were having fun and were playing nice.

Sometimes during one of their turns the other would start “helping” flipping other cards and if they found a match they’d give it to the person whose turn it was. So that was nice, they were supporting each other and I didn’t feel the need to make the game about rules.

Brother won by miles. He had 17 matches, Sister had 11, and I had about 6.

By this point we were all pretty comfortable with each other, and I gave them the colouring books and pencils.

“Are there any connect the dots?” asked the boy.

Darn, I’d seen plenty of books full of connect the dots and did not buy them because I wasn’t sure if those were “lame” or not. Now I know for next time.

He found one connect the dots in the Princess colouring book and was super excited to connect the dots creating a half moon, and counting the dots as he connected them.

This was the point of the night where I found myself torn in two directions. Sister wanted my attention 100% to herself. She was not content to colour her own picture, but wanted me to colour with her. Which was no problem for me, I actually enjoy colouring and brought three books so I could colour with them.

It only became difficult when they both wanted me to see or help or do what they were doing at the same time.

When they both wanted my attention – I wasn’t entirely certain how to handle that and found myself saying “hang on sweetie, I’m watching your brother” or “hang on buddy, I’m helping your sister” and I felt a bit like the ball at a tennis match.

One thing that helped was that while I was helping Sister, Brother jumped over my supine position on the floor. And this kept him busy, while he “waited his turn” for my attention.

I was relieved of a little pressure from this and found myself feeling grateful to the older child for being creatively patient.

Sister though, as a four year old, did want a lot of my attention during the colouring part of the evening.

And it was interesting to experience and acknowledge the difficulties that could arise from this if I have two children myself. As a seven year old, or perhaps as a boy (?), or perhaps even his own personality, he was more relaxed and patient. As a four year old, or perhaps as a girl (?), or perhaps her own personality, she was not as patient!

I’ve often felt that having two would be easier on me as a parent because they would have each other to play with as well. And I know that this works well in many families. I’m certain that it was just because I was new to these kids and a bit of a novelty to have my undivided attention – I believe that it wouldn’t be like that all the time.

Right?

At around 6:30pm we moved to reading. Sister wanted me to come up to her room and pick some books with her… she picked about 10 of them!

I explained that I wouldn’t be able to read all 10 (!!), but that we could choose two or three when we were back downstairs and ready to read.

Brother wasn’t too interested in reading and disappeared into his room for the first 10 minutes.

Sister was happy while I was reading to her, though didn’t wait for the entire page to be read before turning to a new page.

Again, I wondered at the need to teach in this moment or to go with it and make up the bits that were missing in the story. OK – so I like to make up stories….and I went with that idea, which was actually pretty fun!

Brother returned and sat next to us on the couch with his own book. An encyclopedia of characters from Lego Ninjago…a big book! He asked me to read some of it and I started at page one…it actually read as a story and I was happy to read it that way. But he really only wanted me to read the character names on each page and tell me what they were for: like “fire dragon” or “ice master” or whatever.

So we settled into a rhythm, the two kids, one on each side, and me in the middle reading two stories simultaneously, until Sister got jack of sharing my time. She then crawled onto my lap and put her face close to mine so I couldn’t see either book.

Tickles helped this situation and laughter changed her mood. Phew!

Back to reading two books at once.

The book I was reading for her was called “Kisses” and was beautiful illustrations of some different kinds of kisses, like “butterfly kisses” or “bear kisses” etc… we got to the page about “mommy kisses” and she shut the book saying “that’s enough”.

I was grateful to have been present for that moment, because it reminded me that the kids will “show” how they are feeling even if they don’t have the words. I felt thankful to witness that there would be signals like that to open up dialogue with my future kids.

So then we started reading a Robert Munsch book, entitled “Class Clown”.

This book drew Brother in too, and he abandoned his encyclopedia and sat closer where he could see the pictures. This book I was able to read all the way through without much wiggling and impatience on the part of the sister.

They were both more relaxed after this book and it was time to start thinking about bedtime.

But first they wanted another slice of pizza each, would that be OK?

Sure, why not! I had one too.

Nighttime routines, in pretty much every experience I’ve had with kids are always pushed against. This was no exception.

First no one wanted to brush their teeth, then no one wanted to get into their pyjamas, then Sister told me that she didn’t have to wear pull-ups anymore and I said “That’s great!” with enthusiasm because I thought she was telling me she’d “graduated” from pull-ups.

Brother piped up that she does SO have to wear them.

“I DO NOT!” She yelled back.

Uh-oh.

She had already put her pyjamas on, sans pull-up.

This was the only part of the evening I might have done differently. I should have called/texted the parents to ask about this, but instead I asked her, “If your mom and dad were home would you have to wear a pull-up to bed?”

“No,” she said.

“YES!” said her brother.

“Well, I said to her, I will leave this pull-up here next to your bed. I’ll ask your mom if you’re supposed to wear one when she gets home.”

“OK,” she replied.

So that’s what I did. The alternative being to force a pull-up on her was something I did not want to do. Not even a little bit.

Brother didn’t want to go to bed yet, and I’m not certain he brushed his teeth. I put toothpaste on his brush and he wanted private time in the bathroom so closed the door. I didn’t check afterward if he brushed them or not. I figured that if he didn’t, one night isn’t going to ruin his teeth.

When I turned out his main light and he got his nightlight going, I said goodnight and thanked him for being so great tonight, then closed over the door.

Two minutes later he was back downstairs telling me it’s “7:25pm” so he still had 5 more minutes!

Ahhh… I’d forgotten how kids who can read time utilise every last second of awake-time!

So I suggested he go back to his room for 5 more minutes of quiet play time and I’d come and let him know when that time was up.

At 7:45pm I went up and his bedroom door was closed, I couldn’t see any light under the door so didn’t want to open the door and disturb him, in case he’d already gotten into bed. He might have still been awake though because he went to pee just after 8pm.

All was quiet after that.

At the end of the day I think I did alright as a babysitter, there were no mishaps or tears, and I got to witness teachable moments that I would have taken action on if I was the parent.

I also recognised that sometimes teachable moments are good to let slide such as with the game – they were having fun and helping each other (a positive lesson in and of itself) so I saw no reason to stick steadfastly to the rules and make the game unfun or unfriendly.

When their parents returned, I filled them in on the night.

Pull-ups – definitely required!!!

Dang.

I hope that there were no accidents between bedtime and pull-up time! (Mom was going to put one on her right after I left).

Other than that though everything else went well and they were thankful. And it was good to re-experience being responsible for children if only for a few hours. Good practice for sure.

I have to admit that now I feel a bit uncomfortable taking payment for this night. It was a good experience for me, and not unenjoyable at all or like “work”, so I kind of want to let the payment part slide. However, if it were to become a more regular thing then I would accept payments.

Perhaps a barter system would be a better way to do it? I take yours, you take mine.

We could log hours, rather than $$. I now have 5.5 hours banked, and they could look after my children (when they come) in the future?

This is something I’d like to set up in our community for sure. And will give some more thought to it now that I have re-experienced an evening of babysitting.

Do you have any experiences babysitting other people’s kids? From my account did I do ok? Any suggestions for other things to do with them in the future other than colouring and reading?

Warm smiles and Love,

Ali Jayne 🙂