How would you handle a babysitter thief?

[hajario]

@BigT

Not when the OP claims the point was whether it was wrong for the mother to lie and whether such a lie needs to be addressed. I don’t think the OP was backpedaling, either. I see nothing in the OP asking whether the “mom code” was justified nor whether the babysitter was wrong to accept the work.

While both are somewhat interesting topics, the fact that so few people addressed the main topic implies they missed it. It doesn’t even take a whole sentence to address the actual points before going off on the tangent.

I get what you’re saying here. The OP asked, “given that there is a Mom Code, how would you handle this situation?” You think that we should take the Mom Code as the way things are and answer within that context. I don’t agree. Most of us are saying, “this Mom Code is asinine and even if it did exist in our worlds, we wouldn’t play along so we wouldn’t do anything.” I think that this is a perfectly valid answer.

The cites that have come up in recent posts make it clear that this Mom Code is not only very real but very widespread. That means that the poacher can no longer be trusted with phone numbers so all you can do is ignore her pleas in the future and too damn bad if she needs a date night.

[StuffLikeThatThere]

@WhyNot

This probably also depends on where you live/what social circles you run, but around here, there are very few cheap teenaged babysitters anymore. It’s college students or older women. Last I checked, $14/hour was the average rate for one child in my city. A second child is additional, generally about half or a bit more of the hourly rate for one, so two kids and you’re looking at $20-25 an hour.

It sure ain’t the $2 an hour for three kids I made when I was 15, that’s for sure!

Cheese and rice!!! $14? Really? Where do you live again?

I pay $7/hr for a 2 1/2 year old and a 6 month old. When it was just one kid, I paid $5. I do round up generously, I guess. If they are there for 3 1/2 hours, I’ll just pay for 4 hours. I’ve asked repeatedly whether I’m paying appropriately, and my babysitters continue to say it’s great, and ask me to call. If I make a shepherd’s pie and leave it baking in the oven for their supper, they nearly die of joy (two of them in particular love that recipe).

Now I love my babysitters even more than I did yesterday.

[joyfool]

@BottledBlondJeanie

So faithfool you’re about an hour away, wanna babysit?

No? But I haven’t even told you about little Timmy’s 30 food allergies or little Sally’s propensity towards using her outside voice inside…

jk

Hey, I might be convinced. Depends on how good the pay is and what kind of treats you keep. Other than that, I’m booked solid.

[overlyverbose]

@Omar_Little

I don’t really care if you believe it or not. And I don’t have access to the actual e-mail, but in our neck of the woods and in my wife’s social circle the negatives of poaching babysitters is well understood. The e-mail clearly spelled out that she only needed someone’s babysitter for a one time use. There was no implication or assumption on my wife’s part.

And just to be clear, my wife mentioned this to me in a conversation we had yesterday, more as a laugh and knowing to not trust the friend in the future. She really hasn’t given it any more thought. I posted it here to see what sort of response it would get. It’s clear that many of you guys are true to form.

I think that’s really weird that your wife’s friend would have to explicitly stipulate that the baby sitter was for “one time use.” It makes her sound like a thing, not a person.

As a mom living in suburbia, I was aware of no such code, but I guess it’s different for everyone. Still, assuming there is such a code, if the woman has given you no other reason than this for being untrustworthy, I’d just let it go and give her another chance.

[Otara]

I guess if you want something new theres the obvious point that obviously many people here hadnt heard much about this code or dont take it as deadly seriously as some people seem to.

Its worth considering that something similar might be the case of the person who did the original social gaffe as well.

Edit; Also what is the particular benefit in not poaching if you have no babysitters yourself anyway? It would seem it might be awfully tempting to tell said group of mom codees to get bent if they’re deliberately trying to stop you accessing babysitters.

Otara

[WhyNot]

@StuffLikeThatThere

Cheese and rice!!! $14? Really? Where do you live again?

Chicago. Yup. Looks like rates have gone down a little bit with the recession; sittercity lists the current average as $12 for one kid with an 18-20 year old sitter; $12.25 for an over 21 sitter.

Nannypro.com lists babysitters looking for work, most of them in the $10-20 range. I can’t link to a search there, but if you toss in a few Chicago ZIP codes you’ll find them.

[purplehorseshoe]

@Khendrask

Well, it seems to me if you want to ‘Own’ a babysitter, you should adopt a teenager, and never let them sit for anyone else…

I’m fairly certain I know a few people who would take you (or anyone, really) up on your proposal to adopt their teenager…

[Dangerosa]

@Beadalin

This is the first I’ve heard about any such “mom code” and I think you’re being completely unreasonable about the whole thing.

Me too, and I’m a suburban Mom.

Hire a nanny or an au pair so you have someone at your beck and call.

[TruCelt]

You’ll just have to resort to the nuclear option: Always order pizza when the sitter is coming, and make sure you get the kind they like. It helps to pay well too.

[Dogzilla]

Hell, you want to keep your sitter all to yourself? Here’s the magic words: “Yes, *of course *you can invite your boyfriend over to spend the night here, after the kids go to bed.”

[PunditLisa]

@TruCelt

You’ll just have to resort to the nuclear option: Always order pizza when the sitter is coming, and make sure you get the kind they like. It helps to pay well too.

Forget the $2/hour differential. The best thing to guarantee a babysitter will return is to raise kids who aren’t hellions!

[TokyoBayer]

I wish I had the OP’s problem. Japan doesn’t have baby sitters. Grandparents do it if they are close, if not, you hire one though an agency, which is dear. If you don’t have relatives nearby, (the closest ones are in Taipei) you’re SOL.

@Bridget_Burke

Could it be that she was ignorant of the “Mom code” used in more rarefied circles?

How, pray tell, does one chastise a social inferior?

Or is there a socially acceptable way of asking advice from socially inferior people? :eek:

Actually, I don’t know what I would do if I were to ask for advice on a board and discovered that everyone had completely different standards of acceptable social conduct.

[Guinastasia]

@TokyoPlayer

I wish I had the OP’s problem. Japan doesn’t have baby sitters. Grandparents do it if they are close, if not, you hire one though an agency, which is dear. If you don’t have relatives nearby, (the closest ones are in Taipei) you’re SOL.

When I babysat for relatives, I still got paid.

[TokyoBayer]

@Guinastasia

When I babysat for relatives, I still got paid.

Are you a grandmother? They are the only ones who babysit in Japan outside of professional agencies.

[Guinastasia]

@TokyoPlayer

Are you a grandmother? They are the only ones who babysit in Japan outside of professional agencies.

I’m in the States, and I’m certainly NOT a grandmother! But I DID babysit for my cousins a lot, and I definitely got paid for it.

You said you had relatives who babysat – are they still paid, is what I’m asking.

[TokyoBayer]

@Guinastasia

I’m in the States, and I’m certainly NOT a grandmother! But I DID babysit for my cousins a lot, and I definitely got paid for it.

You said you had relatives who babysat – are they still paid, is what I’m asking.

OK, I’ll take it really, really slow here.

You babysat for your cousins when you were younger. Japan doesn’t have young people who babysit: relatives, neighbors, girl scouts, who or whatever. It’s not what girls / teenagers / college kids, do.

If you are lucky, and have a grandmother live nearby, she may help out. We don’t, since one lives in Taipei and the other in Salt Lake. When the Taiwanese grandmother comes, no, she doesn’t charge. Why would she? Do grandmothers charge in the States? Am I stiffing her by not forcing money on her?

The reason that babysitting never took off in Japan is that people used to live in extended family units, with the grandparents, the parents and the kids together in one house. Built in babysitting. But that model is going away, and the idea of young people babysitting hasn’t caught on.

I occasionally babysat as a substitute for my sister, and come from a Mormon family with zillions of cousins, so I had far more experience with babies than my wife.

[StuffLikeThatThere]

@Guinastasia

I’m in the States, and I’m certainly NOT a grandmother! But I DID babysit for my cousins a lot, and I definitely got paid for it.

You said you had relatives who babysat – are they still paid, is what I’m asking.

I can tell you what we do. Adult relatives, on infrequent occasions? No. They do not get paid. Aunts and uncles watch them every once in a while. We’ve watched their kids over the years in the same way, and will in the future. Grandma babysits more frequently, and does not get paid. It’s a favor. When they need help from us, we don’t charge them for our time, either.

However, if were using a tween/teen cousin on a semi-regular basis, for evenings out or something like that? Yeah, I’d pay. My cousin’s twin daughters babysit for us. They get paid, just like the teenagers/early 20s kids from our church. (I will note that my deal with them is that I pay for one babysitter. Two can show up if that seems fun for them, but I can’t pay for two. They almost always both show up.)