Over night stay for babysitting

[Bellabella25]

Hi,
I need some advice and I'm hoping you can help me please.
I've been asked to stay the night (sleep over) looking after a 4 year old girl.
I'm not sure how much to charge...
Hourly rate or a flat fee?
Any advice or thoughts are both welcomed.
Thanks in advance, xxx

I charge my hourly rate until midnight, and hourly rate starting again at 7am (assuming she gets up no earlier than that) and then I charge a flat fee of £50 for the overnight.

This is provided she is usually a good sleeper and doesn't wake constantly throughout the night. Otherwise it's my baby overnight rate of £100 for the overnight (or my hourly rate for the entire time I'm there).

Hope that helps.

Ad hoc night nurses charge a flat rate for the night and that's what i had paid over the years for night nannies when I need them.

This does NOT depend on how much a child sleeps during the night, fgs, after all you are there to look after a child during the night, whether they sleep for 9 hours or wake up avery 2 hours. Also because you can't say that you were going to charge xxx and then end up charging yyyy because the child woke up more than expected.

It does depend. I would charge more for a night I know I'll get no sleep (night nanny rate) than an overnight babysit where I charge a flat rate over the night hours for being there. So babysit to 10pm when I head to bed and sleep (hopefully) until 7am, charging my overnight rate, and the my usual rate from 7am until the end/7pm when it's babysit rate again. That's £120 for the first and about £70 for the second.

And I don't change the goalposts if a child wakes 5 times because they have nightmares or are poorly. That's what the on-call fee is for.

Sorry, what I wrote sounded confusing. I agree in advance what rate I charge. If the child who usually sleeps well wakes up a bunch of times during the night through sickness, or nightmares, or whatever, I don't increase the fee.

I'm an employer and it's an hourly fee up until 12am, 50% off until 7am (or whatever time the child gets up usually) and then the hourly fee again.

If you've been asked to do this as a casual babysitter, the child is usually asleep and you are hoping to get plenty of repeat work then choose your fee carefully. It's pretty prohibitive as a parent to factor in a babysitting charge of eg: 75+ (London 7pm to 7am) on top of the cost of the actual night out and a cab home.

Often as a parent we know that we won't be home until midnight or a bit later and to ask someone to get in a cab then, when they could have reasonably gone to bed at 10pm because they have work/college in the morning seems unreasonable. You need to use your own judgement as to what's reasonable and not just apply an hourly rate.

I babysat a lot as a teenager and it was simply a flat fee until midnight and then an hourly one, ramping up so the parents were incentivised to get home and let me get home to bed and get up for school in the morning