School mom has suggested a class babysitting circle

[Prepschoolmomma]

Good afternoon Mumsnet - I'm looking for a bit of advice here on this subject.

My DD started at prep in September in year 1 and therefore we are still newcomers to an established class and group of mom's. The class representative mom has suggested we all form a babysitting circle to help out with after school pickups and the odd evenings too.

I'm just asking here if this is a normal thing to do? Part of me thinks it could be a good idea for a very odd emergency, my head is screaming NO!

It's a class size of 15. Being the new mom I really don't want to be the one to rock the boat by being the only one to say no. For now, I've just left the group message on read and am waiting to see how others respond.

Thoughts on this?

The class representative mom has suggested we all form a babysitting circle to help out with after school pickups and the odd evenings too.

I think these are 2 different things.
A babysitting circle can be a godsend for young families who want to commit to it and are willing to sign up to the 'tokens' or 'points system' and rules that are set up.

Helping a mate out by collecting their child from school when you get stuck in traffic or have to go on some training from work as a one off is a completely different thing though. It is incredibly helpful to get to know other parents and to help one another out in those circumstances, but it tends to be much more informal and evolves naturally when you get to know a couple of other people.

I don't think one has anything to do with the other.
I certainly wouldn't be wanting any sort of formality about helping another parent out, or asking for a favour myself.

Indeed, "no drama" is the exact phrase I used upthrrad! I just wouldn't opt in. I can see it being handy for most families though, just not mine

I would hate this, and my kids would have hated it too. There were kids in their class that they didn’t like, and they’d have hated it if I’d said “you’re going to A’s house for tea today because I’ve got a dentist appointment, and then A is coming swimming with us next week because her Mum is having her hair done” if A was a kid they weren’t keen on. And I would have hated feeling obliged to take random kids home after school at the last minute because parents were stuck at work or whatever.
I used paid child care, and made sure I got friendly with the parents of my kids’ friends, so we helped each other out unofficially when needed.

It’s not normal at my dc’s prep (private) school. Parents can afford to pay for babysitters / after school Nannys and it’s a friendly enough community that if people are really stuck at short notice they say “can someone collect Tarquin after rugby and bring him back home” invariably they have lots of volunteers to help. Nothing formal has ever been required.

Interesting replies thanks

My reluctance is the fact that we are in it for the foreseeable- what if it all goes wrong - small class cohort - chaos amongst the moms

And years to go to iron out indifferences for the fallouts

It’s a giant NO! From me.
If I want someone to watch my child I let a professional or ask family I know and trust.
Theres so many ways this could back fire!

We did this in the early 90's when Dh and I had a toddler. Never did it again with our later children. There's always one or two people who get everyone to watch their kids and seem to never watch anyone else's children as they are soo soo busy right now!
Sort of like the parents who get at home mums to pick up after school and they never reciprocate no matter how much they promise.
Same happened with car pool for school drop off and pick up, I seemed to do a lot as well as my best friend, they other family were always working.

I was in one of these groups. It was ok for a while but then fizzled out. There was a website to organise the babysitting credits - everyone started with a certain number, each worth an hour, so a 3 hour night out would cost 3 credits. It only works so long as everyone is using it a similar amount, and doing as much sitting as everyone else. But in our case there were a couple of people who ran down their credits to zero then were hardly ever able to return the favours, and others who built up a lot of credit but rarely used it as they didn't go out much, so then they stopped volunteering. On the upside, at least it was all visible.

Ours was just for nights out, not after school. After school is for play-dates not babysitting. The kids need to get along - imagine if you owed someone a babysitting favour but your child didn't want to spend time with their child. 😬

A few mums at my son's nursery did this and it was a nightmare because one mum on the group asked if she could join and none wanted her watching their kids or wanted to watch hers (I wouldn't have either to be fair, her partner is a known drug dealer and she has been arrested before for being drunk and disorderly and urinating in public). Turned into a huge thing and I'm very glad I didn't take up the offer. That being said, very unlikely this is a common scenario 😅

Hmm, well I think it is handy having someone on hand to do drop off/pick up in an emergency. As long as its put on the group chat if anyone needs it and you can decide if you are free etc

I don't live in an area where this is the done thing but with my younger 2 I have been around more for school pick ups/drop offs so have gotten to know some parents well and have helped with picking up children and dropping them at home when parents have been ill or when siblings have been ill and it's a struggle for the parents to get to school etc

It's handy if you don't have local support , I wouldn't commit to evening babysitting and wouldn't want anyone babysitting mine though

It would be likely where I live 🤣

It wouldn't be usual in the North London preps around here and I'm surprised it's been suggested in a prep school. The parents here can afford to pay for paid, DBS checked childcare and about half the families have nannies and 2 parents working long hours. Their time is too valuable (in terms of their hourly rate) to give up family time to spend it looking after other people's dc, and they don't get much time with their own dcs in the week so they'd want to spend weekends focused on their own dcs.

I'm a sahm and I wouldn't want to be part of it - I prefer to host play dates with dcs that my dcs get on with (not being stuck at home with a child who they never play with anyway), and maybe we'd get a break when they reciprocate (but not much as I'd have my toddler still). My dcs also do after school activities every day (like most dcs at our school) so we couldn't fit it in during the week, and weekends usually have a booked activity or trip out. Also not sure how it could be done equally if someone was babysitting for my 3 dcs and they only have 1dc.