Craigslist for Teens

June 14, 2020 9:57 AM

How do adults in your community find out about reliable babysitters, tutors, and dog walkers? Are there any examples of community websites that help with this kind of thing. Our local facebook webpage is always filled with random requests for babysitters or other random help and I can't help but think there has got to be a better way for our community to do this. Does your neighborhood have a good solution for this? I want to help my hood and the kids within.
posted by jasondigitized to Work & Money (8 answers total)

Someone in our town created a babysitter's specific Facebook group that is private. That's where everyone posts if they are looking for a babysitter or a position. I know a lot of people that are para's or teachers during the year offer their services on Care.com during the summer and a lot of teenagers advertise they babysitting services there.
posted by victoriab at 10:01 AM on June 14, 2020

Nextdoor.
posted by 8603 at 10:18 AM on June 14, 2020 [3 favorites]

We basically took our kid to inexpensive classes, like a Saturday morning music class and asked the parents there. One of the instructors also babysat on the side, and we liked her in class so we went with her for a bit.

This was all precovid though.

We tried some of the babysitter websites like urban sitter and it was a nightmare to use. Babysky is now two, so this had been fairly recent, but I didn't have a good in city online support network and couldn't find one easily.
posted by AlexiaSky at 10:25 AM on June 14, 2020

Nextdoor is useful, but I recommend not reading the other posts on there (even in my ultra-liberal neighborhood, there are a lot of racist and otherwise objectionable comments that really upset me every time I open it, like people arguing that they shouldn't have to wear masks even as elderly neighbors plead for them to change their minds).
posted by pinochiette at 10:43 AM on June 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

My community has specific niche FB groups, and there is one just for babysitters/care situations. For safety, it's private, and the admins vet requests to join by verifying addresses, etc. Our planned development has over 6000 homes; there are 1100+ FB users in the babysitting group alone.
posted by candyland at 10:48 AM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

That's exactly the kind of thing Nextdoor excels at.

(I'm jealous of you guys who get Nextdoor drama; the most excitement we ever get is "did you guys hear the coyotes the other night???" or "found: one well-kept chicken".)
posted by invincible summer at 7:29 PM on June 14, 2020

We have a google group and it's mostly word of mouth.
posted by Toddles at 9:20 PM on June 14, 2020

In my community it’s word of mouth through parents - you ask parents of teens if their kids are interested in babysitting or dog walking. And then referrals through social groups - if a babysitter is busy, she’ll introduce you to her friend.
posted by amaire at 10:20 AM on June 15, 2020