AIBU over babysitting rates?

[kittykitty]

AIBU to expect to pay my cleaner a reduced hourly rate when babysitting? When she cleans she gets £8/hour, but I'm presuming that I won't have to pay that for her to sit on the sofa watching TV and was thinking of offering £6. This would be a London rate.

I do not go out on a cold, dark and generally in this country rainy night, to sit in someone elses house for a few hours for less than £9 per hour (depending on the family, I babysit for some less well off families for less or for a spot of bartering!) I generally get £11 per hour and £12:50 after midnight. I have 23 years experience as a sole charge nanny, I have a current CRB and pediatric first aid.

I have babysat for a family whose 4 year old was sick in her sleep and was choking on her own vomit. A family whose 8 month old had febrile convulsions at 11pm (he'd never had one before. A family whose 2 year fell out of bed and broke his wrist. A family whose 7 year old pushed his 2 year old sister down the stairs because she had woken him up when she woke up having a bad dream (never seen such a big egg on a forehead!)

I have also babysat for families where the kids are little buggers and won't do a bloody thing I ask them and so I have 4 hours of running up and down stairs trying to get them settled or families with babies who are teething/have wind/are suddenly unwell and they are not "cushy" jobs!

Tonight I am babysitting (for £12 per hour) for 7 year old twins from 6pm who wont got to bed until 8 and will be up and down the stairs on various pre-texts until at least 9:30 (I don't actually mind as they are ex-charges and I don't get to see them that much!)

Now, I know that these things don't happen very often and are unlikey, but do you think your teenaged babysitter/cleaning lady/old lady from down the street would be able to deal with any of these problems? If you do fine, pay them what they and you think they are worth, if not, stay home until they are old enough to look after themselves!

callaird you'd be lucky to get £9/hour doing anything non-professional down here in Devon. Average seems to be about £6.50 for anything temporary or casual. The highest payer around for temp work is the rural payments agency that seems unaware of the crap wages that are normal in Devon, and they pay £9/hour.

jeez- 1 in 200 babysits goes badly wrong? Can that be right? Even in our accident-prone family we don't get three disasters in every two years. Or is being babysat inherently more hazardous?

I've babysat a lot. No disasters. Lots of tv and cake.

My cleaner babysits in the evening and cleans at the same time. The children are always in bed. 10/h to watch tv sounds a bit steep - it's not actually 'looking after the children' is it?

She'll expect the same rate (sorry haven't read all the posts). 8 quid seems ok for babysitting, I pay an 18 year old on our road 7 quid (I'm in London too).

Put it this way - if you had a job and your employer paid you by the hour say to input data onto the computer but then you were asked to help tidy the office and do some filing - wouldn't you expect the same houry rate as data input .

In a way your are her employer and whatever you ask her to do you should pay her the same rate - unless it really is above and beyond her duty to you then you should pay her more

The thing is whenever we talk about jobs here, people start comparing oranges with apples and talking about minimum wage or wages in Nurseries and supermarkets.

Babysitting is freelance work.

We can only compare it with other freelance services. If i call an aromatherapist to come to my house she will charge me anything from £30 to £300. Of course the same lady could work in a saloon for £6 ph. There are obvious reasons for why freelancing has higher rates.

Back to cleaning v babysitting, the cleaner although SE has set weekly hours, the babysitting is more sporadic.

I pay between £8 and £10 per hour for the girls from my DCs' nurseries to come and babysit. The one I favour doesn't charge me an hourly rate but just asks us to pay her what we think she's worth which is very clever imo. She's great though, kids love her and she was inflappable the one time she had to take DD to hospital!

yabu

your cleaner has an hourly rate and thats is what she charges

as fran said some parents are happy to pay me £10ph rather than £5 to the teenage neighbours daughter INCASE something goes wrong/baby is up teething etc

I would get her to do the cleaning at the same time as she babysits will save her time aswell

I think you could ruin your relationship if you ask her to baby sit for a lower hourly rate.

I think it depends. Is she your only option for a babysitter?

If she is ... just pay her £8 and be grateful to have someone reliable.

If she is not .... then just tell her that for babysitting you pay £x an hour / £x an evening and ask her if she is happy with that or not.

I use sitters.co.uk. I used to use our old maternity nurse / nannies but got fed up of paying £10 an hour for someone to watch my telly as the DTs have never woken up. Also I hate having to do all the calls trying to find someone who is free on the night in question. Sitters takes away all that agro.

cor, I'd like to work in a saloon

Thought I'd update you on what I did in the end - I paid her the same rate as I do for cleaning and she tidied the house up a bit while she was there, so we were both happy!

Good result all round.

DD is 13y 8m and wants to offer babysitting to lovely neighbours over the road, which I support. Toying with the idea of mutual free b/sitting, but if it comes to a paid arrangement, we pay £5 ph (East Mids, Leics) - so it is OK for her to charge £5 too? Neighbours have two lovely pre-school boys. Thank you x

Think I put this in the wrong place (think this is my first MN post) but answered v welcome, thanks

£6/hr is less than national minimum wage. If you offer that don't expect to remain on good terms with her.

Catbert, it would be best if you start your own thread. Most people won't notice the date this thread was started and will respond to the original posting and not to yours.

The Chat forum will be better for your question than AIBU.

You can find it by clicking on this link:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat

Then click on Start a new thread, give it a title and ask your question.

In our area cleaners (bringing own equipment) are £10 ph and qualified babysitters £7-8 ph. On a point of principle I pay my babysitter as much as my cleaner as looking after DD is more important to me than my house.