to think £25 for babysitting 3 children until 3am on New Years Day is disgustingly stingy.

[TaggieCampbellBlack]

DD and her friend. Both 14.
Parents said they'd be back shortly after midnight. Finally rolled in at 3am.

DD and friend slept over but were expecting them home before 3.

Stingy bastards handed over £25 this morning.

And also more than a little surprised. That isn't the done thing really is it? Getting in 3 hours late.

I only babysat for money a couple of times when I was a teenager.

The one that sticks in my memory was when I was waitressing for the summer. I was asked if I could look after the owners' eight year old daughter for the afternoon and evening as I had the evening off. I didn't mind as I was away from home and didn't really know anyone to go out and about with. So when I finished the lunch shift I went to the owners' house and met the child. I took her swimming (free as in a friend's home pool), kept her entertained, safe, fed and read her two bedtime stories. I went back to my digs when her teenaged brother got home at ten o'clock.

The next evening I was paid by her mother for those seven hours. One pound.

That was 34 years ago and I'm still astonished at their stinginess.

No no no - give the precious darlings double that...no in fact, make it triple!

No, I wouldn't use a 14 year-old sitter either, KobayashiMaru, and certainly not until 3 am. Would feel very uncomfortable about having someone I didn't know whose parents I'd never met in my house. I have a couple of older teenagers (nice families, mum and dad in a few streets away etc) that I pay £3 an hour to and they are under strict instructions to check on my son regularly and ring me immediately if anything is amiss, which they do because they are nice sensible people. And one girl who charges £5 an hour but I don't use her much because she's too expensive. I certainly wouldn't swan in at 3 am having left a couple of teenagers, one of whom I didn't know, in charge of my kids.

Hannah your 13 year old may not be mature enough but I can assure you I was.

I was babysitting my younger siblings at 12 yrs for short periods.
Babysitting for other children I knew (parents friends/family) by 14
Fully qualified lifeguard by 16 yrs.
Started medical school - one of the youngest in my year at 17
Qualified Dr at 22.

Some kids are mature enough, you know your daughter, why don't you start letting her mind the younger kids for an hour? Or just while your friend comes round for coffee so you can chat in peace? (if she wants to.)

Sorry that should say "a couple of young teenagers". Although tbh I wouldn't stay out till 3 am even if it was one of my lovely sensible regular girls.

Pictish I wish I had an ivory tower.

I mostly rely on relatives if I want to go out in the evening. Or stay in.
Particularly on NYE

The times I have used a baby sitter, even a cat sitter, I have paid normal hourly rates.
If I want the privilege I feel I should pay fair wages.

that is really stingy. I'd pay a lot more to get a baby sitter on new years eve. Glad my parents cancelled their plans last minute :)

I don't. They're not employees and they aren't working.

Anybody under school leaving age is exempt from minimum wage so a under 16 is exempt.

Quick answer
National Minimum Wage rates
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The National Minimum Wage rate per hour depends on your age and whether you?re an apprentice - you must be at least school leaving age to get it.

Taen from the top of the minimum wage rates table on gov.uk that was posted earlier.

A under 16 ( or 16 yo if still formally registered at school) is even exempt from receiving apprentice rates.

But minimum wage would only have given them an extra 76p as someone has already said.

£25 is perfectly reasonable.

Well 'fair wages' can be negotiated though, surely? My dd has just said that she thinks a fiver for an evening's babysitting is 'fair' but OP's dd thinks £25 is 'unfair.' So long as it's agreed and both parties are content, then I think it's entirely negotiable.

FlipFlop, the scale points out that the NMW only applies after kids have reached school leaving age.

If parents had to pay a NMW to babysitters, baby sitters would also become liable for tax, and their income from babysitting could be counted as part of the family's income for benefit purposes, which would cause no end of trouble...

Also for comparison, note that the JSA rate for a 16-25 year old is £50.95, and that the new 'workfare' schemes require claimants to work 30 hours for that. So... Is everyone who says that 14 year olds should be paid £50 for 7 hours babysitting in favour of a minimum £200 JSA for those on workfare? Remember, some of these claimants have children themselves, so would be excluded from ever going out, since they would have to pay their babysitter more for an evening than they get themselves for a week.

It depends - did they actually do any childcare or were the kids in bed/capable of putting themselves to bed?

Realistically they didn't need two babysitters, the other one was just keeping the babysitter company and they had the house to themselves to watch what they wanted on TV and to gossip without adult waggling ears for a good few hours, and could go to bed when they wanted if they were staying over.

If, god forbid, something had happened they would most likely have phoned the parents to come back rather than having to deal with it themselves so they weren't being asked to do anything outrageously difficult or skillful.

£25 + TV + presumably they got fed, for essentially being a human baby monitor for a few hours? A good deal.

I think a lot depends on the level of responsibility - age/independence of kids, where the parents are, how late, that sort of thing.

I'd happily leave mine with a 14 yo for a few hours whilst I was having a meal/drink locally, & maybe bung them £20-25, fine. (Not on NYE & rolling in at 3am though, that's totally taking the piss IMO.)

But we're often miles away & would be unable to get back in a rush, & it's usually a very late night, so I'm more comfortable paying a sensible wage to an adult. Our usual lass is finishing a medical degree this year & volunteers in a Peruvian orphanage in the holidays - frankly in an emergency she's a damn sight more qualified to cope than me or dh! .

I got more than that 20 odd years ago. I expected a big premium for NYE and an increased rate after midnight.

^Babysitting isn't working; it's sitting and watching telly while helping yourself to nice drinks and snacks.

True, in theory. But what about all the other possibilities, from the simple baby waking up to the rarer events like sick or injured children? Thats what you pay babysitters for, and there is no way I would leave my children with 14 year olds, especially that I didn't know.^

This ^. It's not about what happens. You're paying for what could^ happen. People give babysitters crap money because they can. And i'm a long-time babysitter, did it for years. and i'm poor. But I can still see that you don't take advantage of people just because of their age.

Don't know wtf happened to my bolding, italicing etc there

it is £5 per hour here for bbysitting
we went to a Christmas party a few weeks ago, babysitter 7.30 till midnight and we gave her £25

if we had been out till 3am we would have given her £50 (a bit more than £5 per hour to cover the lateness of the hour)

I think it depends on whether they had to do any work putting kids to bed and whether they asked for 2 babysitters.

If the kids were in bed and she just had her mate around then I think it's an easy £25.

The DDs babysat from the age of 12, until all hours, and with multiple children. They normally came home with at least a tenner an hour and that was no matter how many children there were. One family they looked after (they passed the job on down through my family) had 6 children (5 when DD1 started babysitting for them). I would like to add here that feeding, entertaining and wrangling 5 or 6 children into bed is work. The DDs kept going because those parents were out a lot and the income was steady, plus they knew masses of other parents thanks to having children in every class in the school almost, and the DDs often got referrals to other jobs through them. They looked on that job as an investment.

Other families tended to have 3 at the most. Majority of families had 2 children. People paid the going rate for the area rather than negotiating a rate with my DDs based on number of children, years of experience, etc. If parents were going out they knew how much to factor in for the babysitter and planned accordingly. The DDs knew what the going rate was as their friends were all babysitting too.

The way to tell parents that they pay too little is to not be available when they next call. OP your DD was taken advantage of.

And we wonder why the work ethic is deteriorating in this country. They are children being given an opportunity to earn a few quid.

They are not adults.
They are not being asked to do any ACTUAL work - (different if they did have to entertain/put to bed young kids)

Is there outrage at kids not being given minimum wage for earning their pocket money? No, because they are children.

This is another example of entitlement to "what is right". What's wrong with teenagers being happy to be given the opportunity to earn a few quid for basically doing nothing.

Let's hope that these kids with such a sense of entitlement never have to actually earn their money by calling an ambulance/fire brigade/stopping child from choking etc. That's what you're actually paying them for.

The work ethic depends partly on teens being able to see an actual return on their work. My DDs made a small fortune babysitting and it whetted their appetite for more work. None of them has been out of a job during school or on school holidays since they were 12. From 12 to 16 they did mother's helping in summer and babysitting throughout the year. From 16 on they did office jobs in summer plus babysitting all year. They know what money is. I don't pay pocket money. What they earn is all they have to spend on themselves, or save.

If you want your children taken care of for the night then you need to pay the right rate. If you hired professional adults to do it then you would pay the professional adult rate. Just because it's teens doesn't mean you can pay a comedy figure. The children were taken care of; services were delivered. Pay up or you won't find the teens available next time. Teens can expect to learn more from the babysitting experience than just how to be grateful for a few quid thrown at them, including how the market for a given service works. There's more to work than work ethic. There's knowing when you are being taken for a ride and evaluating if it is worth it. Great skill to acquire, valuing your services accurately.

It's pretty damn unlikely though, isn't it? Or are you saying that, as with all insurance arrangements, it's right that it's a rip-off?

how the hell is it a rip off? Don't be so ridiculous.