What a good babysitter knows before the parents leave

The moment that separates a babysitter people rehire from one they don't usually happens around 8:40 p.m., when a four-year-old announces he can't sleep without the hallway light on and the blue cup, and you have no idea where either one is. Nothing is on fire. Nobody's bleeding. You just don't have the information, and you're now texting a mom at a restaurant about a cup.

That's the whole job, really. Most of it isn't emergencies. It's knowing things before you need them.

Get actually trained, and do it before you take the job

Take a real class with a real instructor. The American Red Cross runs a babysitting and child care course, and they run CPR and first aid courses separately. Your local fire department, hospital, or YMCA often hosts them too. Ask your parents to help you find one.

Don't learn choking response from a video on your phone. You need to put your hands on a mannequin while somebody who knows what they're doing corrects your grip and your force. What you do for a baby under one is different from what you do for a five-year-old, and reading about the difference isn't the same as having practiced it. An hour on a training dummy is the difference between freezing and moving.

While you're at it, learn the rest of the boring stuff: how long to hold pressure on a cut, when a head bump means you call the parents immediately, what a fever actually needs. And commit this one to memory — Poison Control is 1-800-222-1222. Save it in your phone tonight. Kids drink things. It happens fast, and that line is staffed around the clock by people who will tell you exactly what to do next.

One rule with no exceptions: you don't give any child medication that the parent hasn't specifically told you to give, in writing, with the dose and the time. Not Tylenol. Not a cough drop. Not the gummy vitamin the kid swears he's allowed.

The meeting before the first night

Ask for fifteen minutes with the family before the day you're actually sitting. Bring your own parent if you want, especially if it's a family you don't know well. Any good family will say yes to this and think better of you for asking.

Then get the information written down on one page, on paper, stuck to the fridge. Not in a text thread you'll be scrolling through with a crying kid on your hip.

What goes on it:

• The street address of the house, spelled out. If you have to call 911, they'll ask, and you will absolutely blank on it.
• Both parents' cell numbers, plus where they're going.
• One nearby adult — a neighbor, a grandparent — who could be at the door in five minutes.
• Allergies. Every single one, including food.
• Any medication, with dose and time.
• The kids' doctor and the nearest ER.
• Bedtime, bedtime routine, and what the kid is allowed to have after dinner.
• Where the first aid kit, fire extinguisher, and flashlight are.

Walk the house while they're still in it. Front door, back door, basement stairs, the gate to the yard, the pool if there's one. Ask which doors lock behind you. That's a real problem and it happens to people.

House rules, theirs and yours

Ask directly: screens, snacks, bedtime, and whether the kids are allowed outside. Then ask the question most sitters skip. "What are they going to try to talk me into?" Parents love this question because they know the answer immediately, and it saves you from being argued into a second movie by a seven-year-old who is a better negotiator than you are.

You get rules too, and you set them before you agree to the job.

No friends at the house. Ever, not even on the porch, not even for ten minutes. It's not your house.

No one comes to the door. If somebody knocks and you weren't told about them, you don't open it. A real delivery will leave the package.

You tell your own parents the family's name, the address, and roughly when you'll be home — every time, no exceptions, even when it's a family from church you've known since you were eight. That isn't babyish. That's what adults who work do. Somebody always knows where they are.

And your phone stays charged. Bring your own cable.

The part where the kids are actually awake

Get on the floor. The first twenty minutes decide the next four hours, and a sitter who arrives, sits on the couch, and looks at her phone has already lost. Build something. Read the same book twice. Let the six-year-old teach you a game and let her win the first round.

Feed them what the parents said to feed them, at roughly the time they said. Clean up as you go so the kitchen at 10 p.m. isn't a disaster you have to explain.

Bedtime will be tested. Stay warm and don't negotiate. "I know. It's bedtime." You can say a kind thing and an unmovable thing in the same sentence, and small kids settle faster when the adult in the room clearly isn't going to budge.

When they're down, do a lap. Check the locks. Then clear the living room, wipe the counters, and put the toys back. Ten minutes of tidying is why people text you first next month.

What to charge

Nobody can tell you the number from here, because rates swing hard between a small town and a city, and they swing again depending on whether you've got CPR certification and three kids to manage. So find the local number instead of guessing at it.

Ask your mom what she pays a sitter. Ask two other girls who already do this what they get. Ask the family what they paid the last sitter. Three answers gets you a range, and the middle of that range is your starting rate.

Then set your terms like a person running a small business, because you're one:

• Hourly, rounded to the nearest fifteen minutes, starting when you arrive.
• More kids costs more. Say so up front.
• A higher rate after midnight or on New Year's Eve.
• If they ask you to also walk the dog, do the dishes, and help with homework, that's fine, and it's part of what you quoted for — if you knew about it before you quoted.

Now the hard part. Say the number out loud, in a normal voice, and then stop talking. "I charge eighteen an hour" — or whatever your real number is — and then silence. Don't tack on "if that's okay?" Don't shrink it because they seemed surprised. The pause feels like an hour and it lasts two seconds.

Get paid before you walk out. If somebody forgets, one polite text the next day is completely normal: "Hi! Just a reminder about last night, no rush." Nobody is offended by that. People forget.

The stuff that goes sideways

Parents come home late. It happens, and it's usually genuine. Build the buffer in anyway — tell them your pickup time when you take the job, and have your ride locked in before you leave your own house. Never get into a car with somebody your parents haven't cleared, including a dad you've met twice. Your mom picking you up is a perfectly good answer and no one will think anything of it.

If an adult in the house is drinking and something feels off, or anybody says or does anything that makes your stomach drop, you leave. Call your parents from the front yard. You don't need proof and you don't need to be polite about it. You won't be in trouble for leaving early, and any adult worth trusting will back you completely.

If something goes wrong on your watch — the kid falls off the couch, the glass breaks, the toilet overflows — you tell the parents the whole truth the second they walk in. Every one of them. The sitter who says "he took a tumble around seven, here's what I did, here's what it looked like after" gets called again. The one who hopes nobody notices doesn't.

Take the class. Write the page. Name your price.