Occasional babysitting for night out.

Family, Education, Health and Pets
1
I was looking on the forum but couldn't find any infos in all the threads on babysitting.

For a couple who wants a night out once in a while, how do they find a babysitter, how much do they pay and it is the same if both kids are asleep and the sitter is basically watching TV?

Are teenagers allowed to babysit?

While I am still young, it seems far the days I was paid 2 $ per hour to babysit..

2
12 is the legal minimum for looking after smaller children, although, I would suggest this age is only suitable for watching over siblings for short periods only and not for children of strangers for money in an evening when anything can happen.

3
It's common for young people to follow the Red Cross babysitting course, which is actually very good (I had a good look at it when our previous teenage babysitter did it). It certainly helps highlight issues that most young people would never have considered (nor indeed have any reason to have considered).

In our village in BL it was commonplace to have a teenager babysitter and usually the going rate was basically their age! But this would be for evening babysitting when the most they would do is chivvy the kids to bed and sit and watch tv. Anything more than that (ie daytime sitting) and you are going to want someone more responsible so its back to the usual nanny rates in that case . Here in Delémont, I pay 25chf an hour.

As for getting a babysitter, a good way of getting a local teenager is to put an ad in the gemeinde newsletter or if you have a notice board in the village place an ad? I "invited" the applicants to come along with their mother, so this way I got a good feel for whether the parents were behind the matter - and more importantly whether the mum could step in and help if the daughter was having difficulties. It never happened but it was nice to know that mum was 5 mins walk away round the corner.

Not sure how this advice would translate to finding a sitter in a big town. Here, I use the British and German language assistants at the local business college/lycée. There is a network of 8 German and British girls and whilst there are 2 who sit for us most of the time, if they are not available, there is always another colleague who can step in. The girls seem to like the contact with a British family (they drink my pg tips and eat digestives whilst watching UK tv .. they should be paying me!) and my kids adore them to bits.

4
I used babysitting24.ch to find a couple of older teenagers (c.16) that lived in the same or the next village (to avoid transport problems at night). Invited them round to meet us first. Once you know someone from the local high school you can also ask if they have friends who like to babysit.

Up to age 17 I don't think you have to pay social security, above 17 you are supposed to even for occasional work, which is a pain i would rather avoid to be honest for the rarer occasions we go out (I already legally employ a cleaner doing the paperwork myself and one employee is enough for me!). It's always worth having the insurance policy for someone working in your home though as it covers babysitters, cleaners, for chf100 a year for everyone's protection.

I've also used local au pairs for occasional babysitting, they usually just wanted to earn some extra money and are in their early twenties. I don't know if they are technically allowed to do extra work outside their host family - probably not I suppose - but it was nice to have exposure to someone from another culture for my child occasionally, and they were usually also keen to practice their English.

Usually I just need someone to sit for a few hours while the child is sleeping, and sometimes for a few hours in an afternoon so that I can get some work done elsewhere in the house. So I don't really need nor want to pay for a fully qualified nanny, but I always pay babysitters generously (their requested rate plus a bit extra) and provide food and drink and lifts home so that they like coming to us :-)