To think that £20 for a night of babysitting is ridiculous

[Holly102]

My DD (who is 16) babysat for a local mum, I have known for a few years from my DS’s school.

She asked me, on Monday, if my DD would do her a massive favour and babysit for a couple of hours on the Tuesday as her usual babysitter had cancelled last minute. She offered to pick her up and drop her back as it wouldn’t be late . She told me it would be 7 until 9.

So yesterday evening DD was collected at around 7. I texted her at 9 asking if she was on her way home but she wasn’t so I told her to message the mum. No response.

At quarter to eleven my daughter gets a message apologising but does she mind if she stays until around 11:30. It was a Tuesday night, DD is 16!!!! My DD, being young, felt she couldn’t say no.

This is not the end of the story though, the mum finally arrived home at 12:30!!! Far from the 9 o’clock first agreed. She apologised profusely but the proceeded to pay DD only £20.

Is this completely unfair behaviour. Is £20 what my daughter should expect?

Blue Luce- I think the real issue here is that she was 3.5 hrs late on a school night and left a 16yr old (who probably has a lot of school work which she has to be alert for) in the middle of the night with no explanation.

Totally appalling & entitled... 2hrs was her request 7-9 is ok and the verbal agreement, not after 11!!! What if your daughter had decided 2 hrs in she needed to leave for other reasons...
How did your daughter get home at that hour? She cared about herself before her family or your daughter...
We pay over £10 / hr and if we are late, Uber them home and pay and round up...

I babysat a few nights ago. The person I was sitting for was going to be home at 11, but got back an hour later. I didn't get paid and walked home just after midnight.
However, I do have a "favour" exchange agreement and they're babysitting for me next week.
I think £5 p/h is reasonable,, but coming back so much later than expected, particularly when your daughter has to get up for school is very unreasonable. The parent should have given her extra for the inconvenience.
Guessing your DD won't babysit for that woman again?

We’re in the south east, admittedly in an expensive area just outside London. We pay £7ph babysitting and always round the change up as our baby sitter does a fab job.

I wouldn’t be happy with either her being so late or paying so little. I guess lessons for next time are for your DD to establish a rate per hour before hand and to set clear limits on the hours she’ll work before the parents go out.

The amount is reasonable but given the liberty with the late time an extra £5 could have been added. Most 16 year old dont think twice about being up to 12.30 these days especially if being paid. Up to your daughter to decide if she wants ts to babysit again but she should make it clear when she wants to be home by.

A very similar thing happened to me at 17. I had a driving lesson booked for 9am the next morning, which was a wash out because I was so tired. I never babysat for the family again.

I was a qualified first aider, had a qualification in child development and lots of practical skills and experience by 17.

Agree teenagers and adults vary widely in maturity and practical skills

Whereas the OP is completely right to be cross at the late return of the parents, I’m astonished that the rate of pay for babysitting is so high, higher than the NMW, higher than the Living Wage even!.... All for an unqualified teenager to sit in front of a TV all evening with a small risk that they’ll Have to soothe a small child for a short period.

Middle Class Britain really is a world away from Working Class Britain many inhabit

£20 is not enough for 5 hours babysitting, that’s only £3.65 an hour.

Who taught you maths

It’s above minimum wage for doing not much so it’s definitely reasonable. Coming home 3.5 hours late isn’t though

It's not what you do while babysitting that matters. It's the fact that your presence and your time means the parent gets to do something of value to him or her. You are paying for someone's time and sense of personal responsibility.

Cherish123 i completely agree with you, I had already commented and mentioned that, I had just seen all the crazy rates that people were suggesting a 16 year old babysitter should be paid!

Babysitting is a good example of the free market in action. There is no 'correct' wage, just the wage that those offering to work and those needing sitters agree between them. As long as both are in agreement about the wage, anything is acceptable.

So some people will pay a neighbour £5 for a whole evening. If that's what they both agree to, it's fine. Others will pay £75 and if that's what they both agree to its fine too. The same goes for hourly rates. The thing is that anyone is free to say they won't work for a given wage, because it's too low, or free to say they won't employ a particular sitter because their charge is too high. No one is forced here to pay or accept any particular wage. It is up to the sitter and the employer to make an arrangement.

And the arrangement might differ according to place or time of day or age of sitter or numerous other things. These add to why it's impossible to say someone was over or under paid for babysitting.

In this particular case, the employers were in the wrong because they were so late. Al are agreed on this. However, no particular pay Was agreed in advance, so it's impossible to say the girl was underpaid. Certainly if here had been an agreement, given they were 3 hours late, extra should have been paid. Perhaps the cheeky employer planned to pay her £10 for the hours agreed but gave an extra £10 for the lateness and extra hours? Who knows? None of us do, because there was no agreement in advance.

The lesson from this though is clear to all - agree the wage and the hours in advance. If as a sitter you don't like what is offered, don't do the job.

I think the whole issue s complicated by the fact that often these sitters are young girls or boys. They don't usually work or negotiate wages and communication from them isn't always clear. Often it's their parents who feel they should have been paid more and they feel protective if their offspring - these are not adults in the usual world of work, and this has to be recognised both in the responsibilities they are given (for example, a teenage sitter is often just down the road from home and there is an agreement that if a problem arises, their own parent will come round) and possibly in their pay. The job of parents is to help their babysitting teenager understand about being clear up front, saying no to jobs if you don't like the terms etc.

The amount IS unreasonable considering that she's totally taken the piss and out of order to expect a 16 year old to stay up late on a school night. £5 an our agreed in advance is reasonable but if a 9 o'clock turns into on after midnight, then she should have coughed up another £10

Excellent post ChocolateWombat

Chocolatewombat...your post is clear, eloquent, succinct and spot on!

I'm not up to date on the current rates, but when i used to babysit myself I always used to pre-agree the fee, except for this wonderful family whose kids were fun but well behaved and would be no trouble at all and there was always a moutain of snacks and cable t.v. I would have done that one for nothing! My rate would always double after midnight, it was always a weekend, unless I stayed over, in which case I would set a flat fee up to midnight and would stay over for free if I got my own room and breakfast in the morning. They would need to make the breakfast, if they wanted me to make breakfast or look after their kids again while they slept off the hangover the clock would restart at the point I was woken up by the kids! The only people that ever stayed out later than agreed were the ones with the lovely kids and the snacks and they always phoned me to let me know and ask if it was okay. I think the woman was taking advantage of your child, if you didn't agree a fee I think you'll just have to put this down to experience, but in future I don't think doubling the set fee after your daughter's usual bedtime on a weeknight is unreasonable, so long as the parent is made aware of this, also I wouldn't babysit for the friend again, as she is obviously quite irresponsible and put your child in a position where she couldn't really abandon the children, whic is unacceptable.

Chocolate - the wagesihht not have been agreed in advance but the hours were. The eventual return home time was outrageous compared to the agreed return home time and the wages (unshared as they were) do not seem representative.

Following your theory, if the woman had paid the babysitter 1p for her babysitting then technically that’s not underpaid is it... Except it is, morally if not legally. I get what you are saying from a legal point of view but in such as that the woman broke the only terms of the agreement on her side that were agreed (return time) then some allowance should have been offered for the Kate return so it should have come up then. Clearly woman was avoiding the payment issue. ;some would call it taking advantage.

Wages *unagreed as they were

*late

I agree - the hours were agreed at the start and the people who went out were outrageous in being so late. And I also agree that if anyone is 3 hours late, extra money should be paid.
The trouble is, we don't know what they would have paid for the agreed hours. Some people will offer and some sitters will accept £10 as a fee for those hours. As has been said, rates are extremely variable. As nothing was said in advance by sitter or family about pay, we simply don't know what they were expecting to pay.....given their poor behaviour, a low rate seems probable, as they clearly were CFers. Perhaps they only expected to pay £10. If that was the case,now raps they saw giving £20 as covering the extra 3 hours too and in their minds they WERE paying extra. We just don't know. The only thing we can categorically comment on, is the fact that the lateness was truly outrageous and unacceptable.

I think we'd all agree too that the girl shouldn't work for this family again and also that in future she should agree both hours and rates of pay in advance. I'm sure none of us would disagree with that.

And yes, I think it's fairly usual to say there will be higher charges for hours after a given time. This might be after 10 or 11 if it's a school night, or after midnight at the weekend. Willingness or lack of willingness to stay a bit late, giving the family more flexibility, is also important to communicate. Most families will understand if a 15 year old sitter says they cannot sit beyond 10 or 10.30 on a school night. The family need to udbertsand that they must not be late. If they cannot stick to those timings, the sitter isn't suitable for them and the job not suitable for the sitter. Older sitters or teenagers at weekends might be more flexible.

Most families who have teenage sitters of the younger type, I think are aware of their youth and are careful to be back in time, plus usually don't go too far, in case something means they get a call and need to return. Personally I would only use a younger sitter if I could get back in less than 20 mins and didn't intend to be out later than about 11pm. I really wouldn't go somewhere where it was hard to guarantee the time of getting home, or decide to stay a bit longer. It would seem unreasonable. If I wanted to go somewhere a good distance away or return in the early hours, I would be looking for a more experienced sitter, who was happy with it all - and Inwould expect to pay a bit more for it, especially after midnight.

Warn your friends with teens too. This family will no doubt be on look out for more babysitters to mess around.