The Great Babysitter Dilemma

Back in the Stone Ages, when I was a babysitter, the going rate was $1 an hour. I took the liberty of upping it to $1.50 when I was about 15. In retrospect, given that the minimum wage was just over $4 an hour at that time, I probably could have gone nuts and asked for $2 or even $3. But I felt like I was almost being greedy at $1.50.

Even at those exploitative rates, I brought home $150-$200 a month in the summers. That is a lot of babysitting.

I assumed at the time that part of the gig was tidying up messes. It's not like I broke out the vacuum or anything. But if I were sitting for a family whose kids were asleep by 8:00, and they were going to pay me to be there till they got home at midnight, I always felt a wee bit guilty taking their money for four hours of reading my latest favorite novel. So, I'd do a quick sweep through the house and pick up all the toys we'd played with before the kids went to bed, and I'd do the dishes. Basically, when they came home, the house was tidy.

Fast forward to today. The only paid babysitters we've ever used have been women who work at the kids' daycare. One or two, early on, decided they were too busy with school in the evenings, or whatever, to babysit on top of their full-time jobs. One we never had back because despite my careful directions about bedtime and routines, she let our 18 month old stay up and watch tv until 10pm because, in her words, "I kept asking him if he wanted to go to bed, and he kept saying no."

So now we're down to one sitter. She is lovely, nearly old enough to be my mother, wonderful with the kids. She can distract and soothe, drive them to the hospital if there's an emergency, and will read them each five books before bed if they want. She's been a daycare professional for over a decade. She charges $10 an hour, which seems fair given that this is her profession. (Honestly, the first time she sat for us, she just said she charged "Whatever," and I paid her closer to $12 an hour because I rounded up to the nearest bill I had in my wallet, and she got in my face the next time she came and told me point-blank that I "paid way too much last time." So I settled on $10 an hour.)

Here's the thing, though: when we come home at night, the dirty dishes from which she fed the kids dinner are still on the table. The toys are all over the floor. She has done a wonderful job with the kids themselves, but once they are asleep, she is all about HGTV. I find it mildly irksome, given that (for example) this past Saturday, my children were only awake for 45 minutes of the 4 hours of sitting for which we paid her. But I do realize that we are paying her for her time, that I have never explicitly said that I expect her to tidy up after the kids, and that at this point, it's probably impossible to say anything, given that she's been taking care of my children for five years now.

But I have a question to piggy-back on this dilemma.

We have a neighbor girl who is a young teenager. I have been thinking for a while now that I would like to hire her occasionally to play with the kids while I do yard work or chores, or lock myself in my office to grade some papers. Her mother has told me in no uncertain terms that the girl should be paid $5 an hour, as she's very young. My hope is that if she does a bit of playing with the kids, so that they get comfortable with her, we can move on to hiring her for short evenings so that Husband and I can go out for dinner in our town. With her mother literally across the street, I'd be perfectly comfortable hiring the girl to put the kids down to bed and stay with them while we are sipping a glass of wine and enjoying a bite of pasta a mile away.

But I think that I need to be very clear with her about my expectations with her. I don't expect her to clean or be a housekeeper. I don't assume she will multi-task while amusing the children and fold the laundry. BUT, I think that if she comes over for a few hours in the evenings, it's not unreasonable to ask her to do a quick tidy of the things she and the kids actively used while she was here. NOT the whole house. But put the costumes back in the costume box if they spread them all around. That sort of thing.

The question: is this a reasonable expectation? What do you expect from your sitters? Do you expect different things if they are going to be there for hours at night while the children are asleep, as opposed to only while they are awake? Did you tell them this up front? Do you have any other advice for me? (Or do you need to tell me to stop living in the Stone Ages, already? If so, go ahead. I can take it.)