How to find a good babysitter for your kids

Raising a family is a full time job, and everyone deserves a night off sometime. Leaving the kids at home gives you a chance to spend time with your wife, and escape the realities that wait at home. However, finding someone that you can entrust your kids with while you spend a night on the town can be a difficult process. How do you know they are responsible? Will they make sure your kids are safe? True Homes has put together a list of resources that you can use to help you find a good babysitter for your kids.

Ask Your Friends

One of the benefits of living in a new home community full of other young families is that some of your neighbors may have already scouted a reliable babysitter you can use.  Be warned though, with good sitters becoming increasingly hard to come by, some neighbors are reluctant to share their resources.

Another option to finding a babysitter for your kids is barter with your friends, sort of like someone being the designated driver for the night. One weekend, you’ll watch their kids over at your place while your friends go out, and the next weekend they’ll reciprocate. This arrangement can be especially good since you won’t have to pay extra for a sitter, or worry about having a stranger in your house while you’re away. Many areas are also starting babysitter co-ops, which is a more organized community of the barter agreement described above. Instead of paying with money, the co-op works on a point system to ensure that everyone has to give in what they take out.

Online

There are a number of online resources available to help you locate a good babysitter for your kids. More general websites like Craigslist and Angie’s List have very active communities, and a lot of people report having found a good sitter through these sites. Be careful though, when selecting any sitter, you’ll want to do some basic background checking on them and meet with them well before you need them to get a sense of the type of sitter they are.

Other online options like Care.com and Sittercity.com focus specifically on connecting parents with babysitters across the country. Manny of these sitter-centric websites charge some sort of membership or usage fee in exchange for doing a lot of the heavy lifting, e.g., prescreening babysitters and handling the payments.

Everyone deserves a break from the normal routine every now and again, but you want to make sure your kids are safe while you’re out having fun. The most important advice of all when selecting any babysitter to watch your kids is to meet with them first, do a little background research on them. Even if you don’t want to pay for a full background check, you can easily ask your prospective sitter to provide you with several references and speak with them about their experiences with that sitter.

True Homes is the largest homebuilder in Charlotte, NC and has a number of new home communities geared for young families.  If you’re looking to relocate to Charlotte, or are looking for a new home in the area, we hope you’ll consider one of our fabulous communities. One of the benefits of living in a new home development is you’ll be surrounded with like-minded neighbors. For example, you’ll most likely all have young children and can start your own neighborhood babysitting co-op. For more information, visit us online at www.truehomesusa.com or call us on the phone at 704-271-1191. We look forward to hearing from you soon.