Sitting it out
Great - my parents were off out for the night. This meant a blissful evening with Wendy, the teenage babysitter; all kohl-rimmed eyes and a stash of Jackie magazines tucked under her arm. Wendy wouldn’t usher me to bed at boring old 8.30; she’d give me complicated hairstyles and let me stay up late, watching smoochy kissing on grown-up telly.
When I reached my teens, I realised that Wendy had had it easy. Now a babysitter myself, I discovered that the job was a little more complex than scoffing Hula Hoops and rifling through someone else’s bathroom cabinet. Keiren, my three-year-old charge, would regularly liven up the proceedings by threatening to throw himself down the stairs. ‘Stop that nonsense!’ I’d warn in my fiercest voice.
‘I’m going to get a gun,’ he’d yell back, ‘and shoot you dead.’
WANTED: Brave yet kindly babysitter
Now we have three pre-school children of our own and, however much we crave the occasional night out, it’s scary leaving them in someone else’s charge.
A friend, Maria, has daughters aged four and 18 months and says, ‘We moved six months ago and don’t have the luxury of family nearby, or friends we’ve known for ages. I asked a neighbour - the local school secretary - if she knew any girls who’d be keen to babysit, and she recommended Charlotte, who’s 16.
‘Charlotte came round to meet the girls and they were very taken with her. She babysat once and that was fine. We got back very late and she didn’t mind. Next time we came home an hour early - to be greeted by two teenage boys running down our front path. Charlotte appeared looking flustered, and bottles of Hooch were scattered around the house.
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