I am soon to start babysitting for a family and I have never babysat for anyone who was not a family member or friend. There are some parts of this job that make me question how much I should get paid. For example:

- I have to be there by 5am
- there are 3 children (1, 3, 12)
- its on short notice (calls at 4 in the morning)
- and the 12 year old might not always be there

Any suggestions would be a lot of help because the websites I have checked never mentioned any of this or how much to charge for any of the things I have listed.

Id say between £20 - £25 very unsocable hours and very young children :):)

It really depends a lot on your level of experience.

Are you educated in childcare? Do you have first aid? Do you have a college degree in childcare?

If you do, then you should be paid as a professional, seeing as you went to school for this.

If you're just a teen, no childcare education, no experience, then you won't get as much.

Where I live most daycare centers charge between $2-$6/child. But all daycare workers must have their level 3 childcare course. That's a college course. Also, the actual workers don't get that pay, they're paid minimum wage, which, in my country, is $10/hr. That's not much seeing as they're required to have a college degree in child care to work there.

I would ask for minimum wage, and see if the parents agree to that, but you may have to accept less, especially if you're not a professional child care employee, but just a babysitter.

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Originally Posted by cheekiegirl34

id say between £20 - £25 very unsocable hours and very young children :):)

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$20 to $25 a day, or hour?

The hours of work don't really matter that much. A job is a job, you start when they want you to start. It's still morning. Beats the graveyard shift.

As for the children, only one is very young, and even that one is old enough to walk, talk, eat on it's own for the most part. The other two aren't that young at all. A three year old should be potty trained, and can definitely feed itself, and the 12 year old should be more than capable of helping care for the other two.

All in all, it's really not that hard a job. Try taking care of 6 babies under 6 months at the same time. I volunteered at the church when I was 13, taking care of the babies whose parents were taking the baptism course. The average number of babies we had were 6, once we had 12, and only two of us there to care for them. The youngest was a week old. I did that for free!

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Originally Posted by Alty

It really depends a lot on your level of experience.

Are you educated in childcare? Do you have first aid? Do you have a college degree in childcare?

If you do, then you should be paid as a professional, seeing as you went to school for this.

If you're just a teen, no childcare education, no experience, then you won't get as much.

Where I live most daycare centers charge between $2-$6/child. But all daycare workers must have their level 3 childcare course. That's a college course. Also, the actual workers don't get that pay, they're paid minimum wage, which, in my country, is $10/hr. That's not much seeing as they're required to have a college degree in child care to work there.

I would ask for minimum wage, and see if the parents agree to that, but you may have to accept less, especially if you're not a professional child care employee, but just a babysitter.

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Now I'm even more confused... but to answer some of your questions:

-I am educated in childcare. The school that I go to has a program that that sends us to a practical setting of a preschool and has us work with children 3-5 and do loads of book work on younger children and children at an elementary school level.
-As far as I know I'm curtified for CPR... I'm curious, is there any other certification for first aid?
-I don't have a college degree... yet

-But I am just a teen

And some of my other comments on how you answered are:

-$10/h for minimum wage? Lucky...
-the 3 year old as said by the mother is not potty trained but they are working on it
-the 12 will sometimes be with the dad

-and I didn't say it was going to be a hard job... I just said none of the websites I went on offered any help

Now what do you think? Should I charge $6?

$6 would be too little where I live. $10, I think.
Where do you live? And how old are you?
And what's the short notice arrangement?
If you don't know by 6 pm (I'd say) the day before whether you are working or not the next morning, you charge extra. I would even set some flat rates for deadlines. Why should you go to bed at 8 just so you can wait for a possible phone call at 4 am? Yes I know substitute teachers are called that way, but still, this is a job that you have committed to, and a sub doesn't - the school goes down the list until they get someone.

I think you can get away with asking for $10, after all, it's three kids, but be prepared to take $6.

Start high, then you can always accept less. Start low and you'll have no hope of getting more.

Now, for the rest of your post, my second post on this thread was directed at the person that replied to your post and said you should charge $20-$25. It wasn't directed at you, even though it would still help your situation.