Swapping Babysitting

Now that my kids are finished with their school and my work has slowed down, my child care plans require some creativity. If you are engaged in a flexible work opportunity and you are looking to forgo a formal daycare arrangement, looking to other working parents might be the answer to meeting your childcare needs.

Today I watched a friend's kids for a few hours while she worked. She is a tutor and works odd hours, making it difficult to establish a stable child care arrangement. In exchange, she will take my kids for a few hours next week when I have to go speak at a conference.

"Swapping" sitting is something stay-at-home parents do often. But it is something that parents working a flexible schedule should consider. You can identify parents to swap sitting with through networking, but once you have some potential swapping partners, it is a good idea to establish some ground rules.

Starting a babysitting co-op is one way to ensure fairness (more info here). There are many strategies to establish a co-op, such as establishing a ticket system. With a ticket system, each parent in the co-op starts with a certain number of tickets. To 'hire' another parent, you must pay them one ticket for each hour they babysit. To earn tickets, you must babysit someone else's kids. This system prevents any one parent from taking advantage of others by requiring each parent to put some time in sitting to earn enough tickets to buy sitting from others.