Grandmas who live far, far away! Margaret Martin (left) and Judy Wheeler (right)
I rely on babysitters. I know… most parents do. I mean, I really rely on babysitters. When my husband and I moved to Arkansas –gasp–ten years ago, we had no intentions of sticking around. It wasn’t that Arkansas was a bad place. In fact, Arkansas is stunningly beautiful…and probably the best kept secret in America. But since we were both doing television news at the time …we expected to work through the contract period and move on. That’s just the way it is in television news. You move from market to market. Then we had baby…and then another one. You add a new business to the mix, and suddenly our feet are firmly rooted in Arkansas soil. All I can say is “Go hogs! “
But something is missing around us…our family. In our busy lives—with two kids and a business–we are forced to hire out our child care when we need it. We’ve never had the luxury of calling up grandma and asking her to come over. In fact, the nearest grandma is a ten-hour round-trip drive… not exactly a convenient drop-off.
So babysitters have become a staple in our lives. We’ve had great ones, lazy ones, and ones who’ve never showed up for their shifts. Some wash dishes, some leave dishes, and we even had a sitter who accidentally broke a few dishes. And they all make more than minimum wage. What happened here?! I remember babysitting as a teenager….and thinking I was rich if I was given six bucks at the end of a six-hour night. Today…you can’t even hire one for six dollars an hour. These days, not only do they cost more, but there are more distractions in the lives of babysitters to keep them from doing everything except keep a close eye on the kids. iPhones, text messaging, and email …are all at their fingertips.
Take for instance one babysitter we had. To protect her identity, I’ll call her Facebook Girl, because—as it turns out –that’s the only activity she participated in while she was in my house earning her hourly rate. Facebook Girl was an absolute last resort. The only thing I expected from her was to keep my kids alive until I got home. I knew actually interacting with them was not in her job description. That might be why—when I came home—my daughter looked a bit different after having been in her care.
I couldn’t explain it at the moment. But after Facebook Girl went home with her $50 in cash, I happened to look down in my trash can and saw heaps of blond hair with greenish tint. When I asked my daughter what happened, she honestly told me that she had been painting —without supervision– and it managed to end up in her hair. Facebook Girl obviously decided it would take fewer minutes away from Facebook to cut out the green from my daughter’s hair, than take the time to wash it out. Needless to say, Facebook Girl never earned “green” from me again.
Despite a few horror stories, our reliance upon babysitters hasn’t turned out to be all that bad. I think my girls are fairly well-rounded when it comes to understanding different types of authority figures. And they’ve obviously witnessed others who don’t exercise their authority at all. I’ve also never had to deal with the agony of seeing my kids cry when I leave them in the care of others. They’re used to it.
Above all else, my girls have gained valuable lessons in today’s technology. In fact they can work an iPhone better than I can, and can decipher even the toughest texting. So in that regard, my babysitters have really earned their wages. Let’s just hope their new grasp of technology will not come in handy when they become the babysitters. R u w/me?
Gina Martin is co-founder, with her husband, of Little Rock tours. Before that, she was an award-winning television news anchor and reporter. Gina has two daughters, Presley and Brooke.
I can completely relate to this post. I’m 7 hours from our nearest grandma. When we just had one child, we relied on friends. I always at least tried to feed them, but they never … thankfully … accepted cash. Now that we have two, I’ve only once foisted them on my closest friend and only because I was really sick and my husband had to drive me to the doctor.
And your kids must be pretty special because my daughter, who has gone to day care since she was 5 months old, still cries sometimes when I leave her with a teacher she adores. Go figure.
I can relate too. My family is a good 8 1/2-hour drive away, and Hubs’ family is 3 1/2 hours from us. Given that we both work at the newspaper, we’ve really had to scramble in recent years. Last year, Hubs and I covered both Gustav and Ike. My parents drove up from Texas to stay with the kids when we left for Gustav. When we found out we’d be heading to Ike as well, we left Tootie with Moody Mom and my parents met us on our way to Houston and took the E-man home with them.