Babysitting Co-op: Round-Robin Child Care

How to Form a Babysitting Cooperative that Sticks

To parents with young children at home, a trusted babysitter is a treasure. Often, in neighborhoods with plenty of young families, eligible babysitters are in high demand. In addition, babysitting costs can add up quickly.

Creative parents look for ways to devise practical child care plans for their toddlers and preschoolers, so that they can occasionally enjoy afternoons or evenings out.

In many subdivisions and neighborhoods, where young families abound, parents have pooled their parenting skills by forming babysitting cooperatives. These co-ops, or babysitting exchange networks, allow parents to care for one another's children in turn.

Neighborhood associations may offer complex cooperative child care programs, including printed regulations and possibly elected directors. Others have much simpler systems.

Babysitting Co-op Bonuses

Before my children started school, we lived in a very friendly neighborhood, filled with young families. Tricycles and training wheels cluttered the sidewalk, every time the sun was shining. Swing-sets and sandboxes attracted neighborhood youngsters in droves. Kiddie pools were filled with splashing, shrieking tots.

Before long, the grownups became fast friends, sharing parenting pointers and fresh air.

In this happy and hospitable environment, several stay-at-home mothers put our heads together and developed a babysitting co-op. Using a simple system (earning and spending printed popsicle stick tokens), we cared for one another's children once a week.

In our neighborhood, the babysitting co-op offered several important benefits to our families.

Trustworthy Babysitters

First, as stay-at-home mothers, we all agreed on the importance of relying on safe and skilled babysitters. Who could be more eligible to care for our children than other confident and capable parents? We knew our neighbors well, and we were able to trust one another.

After all, we had already shared many playground visits, museum and zoo trips and neighborhood events.

Super Socialization for Kids