Babysitters: Would you prefer skilled or cheap?

Euro Weekly Newspaper today noticed a post by one of our readers, and it got us thinking… If you had to trust someone to care for your child, would you prefer someone experienced, or someone with good rates?

One would have thought, that when trusting the life of your child to someone else, one would want someone who is experienced, knows how to care for a child, can entertain them, and keep them safe…

But when we spoke to Emms Paigee, who has been babysitting since her teenage years, we were shocked to find the rude comments she had recently received from potential clients.

Emms said that she has worked with some incredible families, has wonderful references, has taken time to study, and is qualified and professional. Yet when asked her hourly rate (a mere €5 per hour at her home, or €6 at the clients own home- including her travel expenses), she has been bluntly told that she is ‘too expensive’, a ‘rip-off’, we’ve ‘much cheaper than you’, ‘that’s so expensive’, and so on and so forth… It comes as quite a shock!

Does this not say something about the care people expect for their child?

Emms says that she is tentative with the children she cares for, tries to make her time with the kids enjoyable for them, doing arts and crafts, singing, dancing, learning, general interaction- even buying toys out of her own money to play with them!

Since the pandemic, money is tight for many, but babysitters need to make a living too. When you leave a child alone with someone, the welfare of that child is handed over to them. Parent’s must recognise that that is not always an easy job!