A College Student’s Guide To Babysitting

By Emily Plummer on October 1, 2015

College students are often labelled with certain stereotypes: stressed, sleep-deprived, under-funded, caffeine-addicted, party animals, ramen-eaters, overworked.

Well, maybe not all of these are true, at least not for all of us. But there are college students out there who can relate to each one of these characteristics.

Image via Flickr.com

For those of you who identify with the impoverished college student motif, who feel the weight of your over-priced tuition pulling you away from that organic avocado and toward a box of Easy-Mac, or for those of you who would just like a little extra spending money to invest in a new jacket this fall, this one is for you. Babysitting is a way to earn money in a field you might already be great at.

College students are often in high demand for babysitting jobs, and rightly so. We students have acquired specific skills through our time at college, that are perfectly applicable to caring for children. And our desperation for extra cash as well as time in an actual family home rather than our dingy dorm rooms, make us willing candidates for these jobs.

The connections between college-learned skills and babysitting qualifications may not be readily apparent, but not to worry, that is what I am here for. This guide will give you material to impress future employers and to draw from in your future babysitting adventures.

Here are some of the skills you may already possess as a college student, that can be applied to babysitting.

Multi-tasking

This is the glue that holds full college schedules together. Multi-tasking allows you to write a political science paper, study for an economics midterm, and plan the agenda for a club meeting all in the same three days. Because success at our universities requires we be good at juggling many priorities, students become very good at this. So when a babysitting employer asks you about special skills, here is one you are probably a pro at.

Children, like school, require lots of attention directed in many different directions. While one child might be reading, another might be asking you to play a game, as you are attempting to make dinner for everyone.

As a babysitter, you cannot give up one responsibility to focus on another, you must keep all of your tasks in mind and check in on each of them regularly, just as you would with each of your classes and commitments at school. Think of the many aspects of babysitting in this way and you will know just how to handle them.

Caring for our devices

Students show great care for their laptops. Image via Flickr.com

As students in this blossoming technological age, our technological devices– especially our computers– mean the world to us. Just think, how would you complete your computer science project or type up your anthropology final paper without your laptop?

And so students take special care of their laptops. You hold them with caution, carry them in cases, and ask others to look after them while you leave your desk in the library. Children can be thought of similarly; you would not leave the kids you are watching alone or play with them recklessly … they are precious little ones that need extra special care.

If the idea of caring for someone else’s children seems like too much responsibility for you, just think of the caution and care you place on your laptop, an inanimate, yet very central object in your life. If you take care of that without much trouble, you may be able to move on up and apply those ideas of care to babysitting.

Taking care of drunk friends

Sometimes the children you deal with when babysitting may be difficult or unreasonable, and other times they may make lots of jokes and want to dance around and play. Every day will be different, but a big part of being a babysitter is being able to laugh and have fun with the kids you watch while still imposing rules on them.

You probably have lots of experience in this already and do not even realize it. Drunk friends can act a lot like children at times. They sleep anywhere, they make funny faces, they want to eat junk foods, they don’t worry about acting crazy in public, and they say some things that are incomprehensible.

They can be lots of fun to be around, but when it comes time to tell them what to do, they often refuse or ignore you. Whatever strategies you have developed to get your drunk friends home from a party or to drink water at the end of the night, these can be applicable to reasoning with stubborn toddlers too. Because in the end, you just want what is best for them both.

Getting to class on time

Students and babysitters are often restricted by time. Image via Flickr.com

Okay, so some of us still haven’t quite mastered this one, but for those who have, punctuality is an excellent asset for babysitters. Scheduling your morning to get out of bed in time to make it to campus for class before you’ve missed any of the professor’s lecture is the same principle as making it to work on time as a babysitter.

Oftentimes parents have to go to work or appointments when they hire babysitters, so your punctuality is essential. Showing that you can get to your classes by their start times is a good way of proving you will be reliable at arriving to babysit when a family needs you.

Compassion

College puts students face to face with many issues facing our world today. We come into contact, often for the first time, with social justice issues, global inequalities, and people from all sorts of different backgrounds. These new experiences teach us to look at the world from different perspectives and to have compassion for the many people we encounter in our studies and in our lives.

This is one of the most important qualities of a babysitter, because at the end of the day, you are there to provide care for children. The compassion we learn to show others throughout our college experience is the same compassion that babysitters must be able to show the children they look after, in the games they play, the rules they enforce, and the bedtime stories they read.

College gives students incredible capacities to manage many conflicting responsibilities, knowledge in endless subject matters, and opportunities to be creative and silly, qualities that are all necessary to create caretakers, role models, and playmates for kids.

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