Finding a Babysitter

During my run this evening, I was listening the episode 198 of Spark from CBC. The topic was locating babysitters through a social network. Blogger, Bonnie Stewart, weighed in on the dilemma of who can you get to watch your children. She reviewed the app/website called urbansitter that is designed to connect parents with sitters through a social network.

It is linked through Facebook, and even before you get to see how the program works, it asks personal information about you, your children and where you live. Bonnie pointed out that it is not very popular yet in Canada and she was the first person in her community to sign up. This meant, it would not be able to link her with a sitter in her area because no sitters had signed up yet.

She also pointed out the major flaw in this system is how we discourage interactions online between teens and adults. We might already have the right connections to find babysitters, online, through our own personal networks, but we are still separated by that one degree. How often are we, as adults, warned against the perils of befriending young people online? Especially as a teacher, I am told to keep my professional distance.

I am not friends with any teens on Facebook. Unfortunately, most of the local people I have in my contacts do not have children old enough to babysit my own kids. However, maybe they know of a good babysitter. My husband tried seeing if some of his students would be available, but the good ones all have jobs on the weekend. We do not have family nearby, so we can't drop the kids off at Grandma and Grandpa's or have them come over here. We have not gone on a date in months.

I would probably never consider using a site like urbansitter. It seems strange having a stranger watch your children, even if the sitter was recommended by Cindy from playgroup. I have thought about cooperative babysitting, such as asking my friends who have children the same age as mine if they would watch our kids one night in exchange for us watching theirs another night. I have not had the nerve to ask anyone yet. Most of my local friends have grandparents or family who can watch their children, so they have no need for us.

For now, our dates are limited to times when we are visiting my parents in Oakville, or, if they come up for a visit, we might go out one night. We usually do not take advantage of these opportunities though, as we are busy most days when we are visiting, and we would have to plan a date ahead of time. Seriously, for my birthday, Christmas or Mother's day, I would love to have a babysitter voucher. Do you know of any good babysitters?

 

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