What`s going on in the suburbs on Saturday night? For a lot of parents of young children, nothing.
It seems the prevalent decreasing average age of available sitters is making parents less than comfortable and leaving them with the nagging question, ”Is it really worth the evening out?”
According to Deerfield resident Diane Goldstein, the answer is a resounding ”No!” The mother of two girls ages 8 and 5 and a boy 1 1/2 years old says the available sitters just aren`t worth it.
”You get the sitters when they`re 11 or maybe 12 (if they`re the youngest in the class.) When they`re 13, they`re going to four or five bar mitzvahs a weekend. And when they`re 14 and 15 they`re in high school, and they start doing sports or school activities and they won`t commit. When we had the baby we gave up.”
Goldstein said a baby is just too much for an 11-year-old to handle, along with two other kids. ”Most 11-year-olds, unless trained well, have no idea what is going on,” she said. ”It`s one thing to learn about a crying baby in class but another to hold one and have to make it stop.”
Almost a retired sitter at the ripe old age of 13, Josh Hoders, a 7th grader at Caruso Junior High School in Deerfield, said he doesn`t agree that 11- and 12-year-olds aren`t good sitters. ”If they`re responsible and able to take care of kids, I think they`d be just as good as a 13-year old.”
Hoders doesn`t sit much anymore because he`s ”busy with going to bar mitzvahs and busy with lots of homework and studying for tests.”
Two very knowledgeable historians on the current trends in baby-sitting are mother and daughter Deena and Risa Newman of Buffalo Grove. Deena taught a baby-sitting course at the Deerfield Park District for 15 years, from 1975 to 1990, her last two years assisted by Risa. When she retired, Risa assumed her mother`s position.
What`s changed from the `70,? First to come to mind for Deena are boys baby-sitting. ”At the beginning, there were one or two shy ones.” By 1990 boys made up 30 to 40 percent of her class and were much more outgoing. When it came time to bring a doll to the class for the diapering lesson, ”they didn`t sneak in the back way but walked in proudly.”
Risa said boys now easily account for 50 percent of her classes, which are composed of mostly 10- and 11-year-olds, with an occasional 12-year-old.
”The age has really come down a lot,” Deena said. ”In 1975 I didn`t want anyone in there (my class) under the age of 12. My three kids were little then, and I felt no one under 12 could care for them.” As the years went by, Deena admitted that the kids seemed to be more mature at an earlier age.
The kids are more grown up at 11 years old now, Risa said. ”At age 11 they want money of their own and their own responsibilities. When Mom started the class it was composed mainly of 13- and 14- year-olds. Now, at that age, they don`t want to baby-sit anymore. They`re on to bigger and better things.” Both agreed that the better things included an active social life or the quest for ”real” jobs. Calls to various high schools in Lake County, including Highland Park, Deerfield, Barrington, Lake Zurich and Wauconda, showed that baby-sitting jobs are posted on the job board right next to jobs covered by minimum wage.
Although the going rate for younger sitters seems to be $2 to $3 per hour, the high school kids want more. ”I hear kids talking that if it (the job) isn`t $5 an hour they`re not interested,” said Bob Cardiff, the career internship coordinator and teacher in charge of the job board at Highland Park High School. ”Here a lot of kids don`t want to work. It depends on the pay. All kids have spending needs.”
Sandie Kleiner, registrar at Wauconda High School, said the office receives quite a few calls from parents requesting sitters. ”Sometimes people get a little angry with us. We`re a school, not an employment agency. Some get upset. It`s hard to get sitters. It`s a real need. Kids really aren`t that interested in working.”
”There is a shortage of good sitters, so parents disregard the age if a child is mature,” Deena said. It`s interesting to note, she added, that
”these same parents who hire sitters at 10 and 11 were afraid to leave their own kids in charge at 10 and 11 and would send them to the class to prepare them. They experienced the problems in younger sitters before they had been trained.”
The key to the age dilemma seems to be responsibility. Are younger kids really more responsible today?
Deerfield Police Department`s Officer Friendly, alias Public Information Officer Eric Lundahl of Lake Forest, wonders if younger kids today really are more responsible, ”or are we putting them in a position where they have to be more responsible.” Quite frankly, Lundahl said, ”I don`t have an answer for that.
”I think sometimes kids start too young, and the responsibility just is not there.” However, he continued, ”you can`t put an age on it.
Responsibility is different for everyone.”
Lundahl has been a guest lecturer in the Deerfield Park District baby-sitting course for 11 years. Although he has watched the student profile shift from a majority composed of junior high students to grade school students, he said that sometimes the youngest kid in the class is the most attentive. ”You just know he would be a good sitter, whereas I wouldn`t want the 13- or 14- year-old,” he said. ”Let`s face it, there are 40-year-old adults who are not responsible.”
”I can`t think of anything more important for a parent than having someone responsible watch their kids.” He said that when parents call and ask his advice on what age to leave the kids alone or what age should the sitter be, his standard answer is responsibility. ”. . . And that comes at different ages.”
The ultimate responsibility of a baby-sitter is the safety and well-being of the children. Once the parents shut the door, the sitter must attend to all squabbles between siblings, delinquent bed times, cuts and falls, phone calls, noises in the back yard, and all monster sightings. The curriculum of the Deerfield class covers police, fire and personal safety; first aid; hazard hunting or home safety; games and entertainment; diapering and infant care.
One major change between the class Deena designed and the one her daughter teaches is the issue of physical and sexual abuse. ”I didn`t have to deal with them in the earlier days,” Deena said. ”I only knew about sitters doing it to kids. Now Risa sees it both ways.”
Through education Risa hopes to protect both the sitter and the child. She has added an additional two hours to the class to make the children aware of physical and sexual abuse in three basic areas: 1. The sitter as the reporter of suspected abuse of the child she is watching; 2. The sitter as the cause of abuse either by hitting the child or inappropriate touching; and 3. Awareness of parental abuse to the sitter, including drunk parents driving the sitter home.
Regarding topic No. 3, Lundahl said, ”The focus is usually on the parents of the kids being baby-sat as `What kind of sitter am I getting?` And equally as important for the parents of the sitter is `Where is my child going?` If it was my child, I`d be real tentative to let her go to a parent`s house I knew nothing about.
”You want someone you know something about. And it goes both ways. The parents of the kids need to know about the sitters and the sitter`s parents need to know about the parents of the kids.”
One way to accomplish this is by setting up a pre-meeting among both sets of parents, the sitter and the children to be baby-sat, said Barbara Dahl, extension home economist for the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service of Lake County, Grayslake.
”The first time my son started sitting, he put an ad in the paper and a mother came over with her two girls and a boy and visited with my son and with me,” Dahl said. ”Then she invited him over to her house to visit. Everybody got to know each other, and she got a feel, well, would she be comfortable with him, and he also got to decide would he be comfortable sitting with these kids.
”And I thought that was really a very good way to handle it because she could say, `Well, I`ll call you.` And if he didn`t hear from her, then he would know, `Well, she really didn`t think I was somebody she wanted in her house.` Or, he could say, `I don`t want to sit with those kids, they`re terrors.` So he would also have that option.”
In addition, Dahl said the pre-meeting is important because ”you just don`t want to drop a kid in cold-especially a young one. You have to spend time with them, saying here`s the phone, here`s the back door, here`s the front door, here is where the toys are stored.” She added that`s it`s important to go over it again when they come to sit for the first time so that they realize ”that they have quite a responsibility and have to know how to handle it.
”… And they think they`re just going to sit on the phone and talk to their friends and eat ice cream. Sorry, it`s a responsibility.”
