Job Description

Babysitting Summer

I’ve spent many of my summers being responsible for kids other than myself. Every summer was always an experience to say the least. Kids have a way of making days very interesting with their many ideas.

A babysitter is someone who gets paid to care for another person's children. When babysitting it is important to remember that you are dealing with children. With this comes lots of responsibility and fun. Kids can be many things: small, curious, moody at times, and playful to name a few. As a babysitter it is your job to be ready for anything that comes your way at any given moment.

If you ever catch yourself taking on the role of any of these three things, you might be a babysitter.  

• Chef

• Teacher

• Kid 

Chef

Kids are very peculiar about what they choose to eat. For that reason, one usually has to get creative with feeding time.

• Put a spin on existing dishes 

• Incorporate fun colors and shapes when possible

• Be ready for critique 

Making meals appealing and exciting to a toddler is a very tall order. One morning I found myself in the kitchen with a hungry four-year-old and her eight-year-old sister. Who were refusing to eat any of the basic breakfast foods such cereal and eggs to name a few. The solution to this was to get creative so I came up with Pony pancakes.

These pancakes consisted of pancake batter died pink with a drop of food coloring, chocolate chips and bananas. The next step is to use a cookie cutter to make the pancakes a star shape. The last step to make this meal seem enticing is to give it a cool name hence, pony pancakes along with a nice story. It’s safe to say that the pancakes were a hit, and all the breakfast got eaten that morning.   

Teacher

• Have lots of patience 

• Get ready to answer questions 

Questions come up a lot when watching kids. They have a million different questions to ask, and they always expect an answer. They are always curious about anything and everything. Along with answering questions like a teacher would, a lot of the time you also have to teach kids to do random things such as, using scissors.

Teaching a kid to use scissors is way harder than it sounds. When teaching four year old Victoria how to cut paper I ran across some challenges. She had a hard time continuously opening and closing the scissors. So I had to take her hand and guide her in the process. Lets just say it's good that we were using non pointy safety kid scissors. If not I might just be missing a finger or two.   

Kid

Not taking things too seriously comes with the job.

• Get ready to play and make up games

• You are never to old to have fun

The last role of a babysitter is knowing how to act like a kid. This might seem like a funny need, but it is very much needed. Kids are always looking for games and people to play them with. An example of this is when I came up with my original game of toss the dog. This game is basically hot potato but instead you play with a purple Squishmallow dog. That small change was enough to intrigue the sisters I was babysitting for the night. Even though it's so simple this game ended up being a crowd favorite and the three little sisters always ask me to play it when I watch them. They get so into the game that we can play this for a while before they get bored and ready for the next activity.     

passive sentences: 0

flesch reading ease: 72.6

flesch-kincaid reading level: 6.8