Babysitting Group

For boys

1. William
2. Jack
3. Lachlan
4. Cooper
5. Thomas
6. Joshua
7. Oliver
8. Noah
9. Riley
10. Ethan

For girls

1. Isabella
2. Chloe
3. Charlotte
4. Mia
5. Oliva
6. Emily
7. Ella
8. Sienna
9. Sophie
10. Amelia

Recently Michigan tried to stop a mother from babysitting for her neighbors by enforcing a state law that prevents you from providing more than four weeks babysitting each calendar year unless your a licensed day-care provider. The mother wasn’t being paid to provide babysitting and the parents often exchanged babysitting at night. If you’re in Michigan and part of a babysitting co-op then this pretty scary as the state is trying to make you pay for babysitting.

If your co-op is using tokens to keep track of babysitting then it might be time to re-issue them. Over time tokens are lost and you might find there are less in circulation than you expect. When the number of tokens in circulation falls too low the co-op will enter a recession.

To work out if there is a problem start by calculating how many tokens should be in circulation. This is a quick calculation:

Number of families X Number of tokens per family

For example: If you gave each family 20 tokens and you have 10 families in your co-op then you should have 200 tokens in circulation.

Now ask everyone in the co-op how many tokens they have. In a perfect world these will be the same. If your co-op is missing a significant number of tokens then you should consider re-issuing tokens.

The process of re-issuing tokens is simple:

1. Make sure everyone is aware the tokens are going to be re-issued. They will need to know when the tokens will be re-issued and when the old tokens will no longer be valid.
2. Print new tokens.
3. Between the re-issue date and the expiry date you will need to swap any old tokens for new tokens.
4. After the old tokens have expired you will have some new tokens left over. Distribute these evenly between the co-op members. You might find you need a few additional tokens to make this even

Now your co-op should be functioning properly again.

Here are two posts I recently came across from parents who have just hosted their babysitting co-op. Sounds like a great time was had by all.

Free babysitting…well, sort of

Babysitting Co Op & best husband in the World

As I get closer to launching the main site and application I’ve decided to move the blog to it’s own site. Effectively immediately you’ll find this blog at http://blog.babysittinggroup.com/

I’ve already made a number of posts about starting a babysitting co-op. Recently I stubmled upon an article by Debbie Simmonds which adds a few additional items to consider.

1. Size of the group
2. Membership requirements
3. Guidelines for handling emergencies
4. Sick children
5. Late pickups

If you have any other suggestions for starting a co-op then let me know. I’ll try to incorporate everyones feedback into a single guide for creating a babysitting co-op.

Not all  babysitting co-op’s start out as something you plan. I found an article on NWAnews.com about a mall stroller group which is also an unofficial babysitting co-op. It just shows that co-op’s can grow naturally out of the people you already know.

Most parents think about babysitting co-ops from their point of view (cheap babysitting). While reading this post I was reminded of something my aunt once told me about how all of the children in their co-op were friends and continued to be friends long after they were old enough to look after themselves.

Even if you don’t need a co-op it might be worth joining one just to help your children meet some new friends. There’s more to be gained than just cheap babysitting.

Some readers of this site may be wondering who I am and why I decided to create BabysittingGroup.com.

So who am I? My name is Rich and I live in Sydney, Australia. For the last 13 years I’ve been developing web applications for other people. While I still have a day job working for someone else I’ve always had side projects, like this, to keep me occupied.

About 18 months ago I became the father of a wonderful baby boy we named Jonathan.

Jonathan at 10 months

Just prior to Jonathan’s birth I was told about babysitting co-op’s by two people. This was really well timed as a number of my friends had also recently had children too.

While the co-op that they both described sounded like a great idea it also sounded like an administrative nightmare. This is the point where good idea plus web developer becomes a good opportunity. My plan is to build a web application that handles the co-op administration.

The first version will be out shortly. Until then I’m going to use this site to write about babysitting co-ops and the development of the application.

So far I’ve only written about babysitting co-op’s using a points model but this isn’t the only model available. If you have a smaller group, 3-5 families, then there is an alternate co-op model that uses a roster instead of points.

Everyone in the co-op agrees on a day/time that babysitting is provided. For example, Friday from 7pm to 11pm. Each family is added to the babysitting roster. If you require babysitting then you drop your children at the home of the rostered family (after feeding them) and they will be looked after.

This model is less flexible than the points based model. It provides parents with a regular date night rather than babysitting when required. If you’re co-op is too small to support a points based system then this might be an option for you.