Babysitter doing first bedtime with 3yo?

[starmerllama]

My 3 yo has only ever had me or his Dad do his bath and bedtime stories etc as we have no other family. We have one babysitter who he likes (a qualified nursery nurse) but she always arrives after he's gone down.

We are now thinking about asking babysitter to arrive earlier and do his bath and bed routine to allow us more time to go out, go to the theatre etc.

With this next step, has anyone else experienced this and have any tips about how to help it go smoothly? Ie if your child doesn't have grandparents / has never had anyone else put them down?

Specifically should we just run through how we do things with babysitter and then leave her to it and walk out the door? Or should we accompany her the first time to get DC used to it? Or will that be worse?

Worried DC might find it weird. But maybe he'll be fine?

I asked him if he would like babysitter to do his bath one time and he seemed confused!

I'd ask the babysitter what she'd prefer/what works best. She's the expert!

For me, I'd want a run through of the routine and then to be left to it.

Make sure you go somewhere you can answer the phone the first time though incase she has any questions.

How well does he know her if he's always asleep when she's there?

Let the babysitter decide.

When I have a babysitter for my 2.5yo I usually just tell them to wait until she's tired then do a quick nappy change, book and bed. She's really good when she gets tired and usually just gets cuddly rather than whingy.

Maybe plan a shorter outing, so if bedtime is 7pm, go out at 5 and come back at 8 so she has a good shot at getting him down but he equally shouldn't be ridiculously exhausted if she doesn't manage. He will probably be fine 🙂

I would probably skip bath that night. Have him in pyjamas. Leave her to give him supper, story, bed.

We've had a couple of different nursery staff babysit our 2 year old, and we get them to do bedtime. That's partly why we're paying professional rates rather than just the going rate for a local teenager to sit un our house while DC sleeps! Anyway, our experience has been that he goes down more quickly and easily for them than he does for us.