I know this topic is heavily debated and standards now are vastly different from 10,20,30 years ago.
I have a 7month old and a 2.5 year old.
My husband and I would like to start getting fitter and pre babies we would regularly play tennis in the summer evenings.
My children both go to bed at 7pm and very very rarely wake up once in bed. If the baby did it would be a quick dummy plug in and job done.
We have never used any kind of babysitter before.
I see 'ofsted registered' childminders offering babysitting services but we don't really need a whole evening and would they even be interested in coming for just 1-1.5 hours.
It got me thinking about whether it would be ok to consider a neighbour teenager?
Both kids would be in bed.
We would be gone roughly 60-70 minutes.
We would be about a 2 minute drive from home if they did wake up and sitter called us could come home immediately.
My toddler knows this teen ('not amazingly well) but wouldn't be startled or scared if they woke up as we would tell him that 'x' is coming round tonight . The 7m old wouldn't really know.
In this situation, with these set of circumstances, how old would this teenager need to be in order for you to agree to this.
13?14?15?16?17?18? Not at all unless an ofsted registered professional?
I consider myself quite overprotective and I can't tell if my judgement is normal.
If it's relevant, the teenager is sensible, reliable, has basic common sense and a 4 year old sibling so she's 'good' with children.