Not the Entertainer

Since it's school holiday time, I did some babysitting this week. Before I was left alone with the boy, the mother was telling me some of the different things I could do with him to "entertain him". I'm sure she didn't mean anything by this comment, but it made me wonder when the switch happened from people looking at babysitters as caregivers to people who entertain their kids for a set amount of time. 

I have been babysitting on and off for the past 15 years of my life, and I have never thought of myself as an entertainer to children. When I was young, I had adults who were around that kept an eye on me when my parents could not, but for the most part it was up to me to entertain myself or be bored. That's probably why I am still good at coming up with ideas for kid activities. 

When I babysit, I do engage with the kids and try to come up with interesting ideas for things we could do. Unfortunately, I think the more good ideas I come up with, the less the children become adept at coming up with their own ideas. I do always try to help them come up with their own ideas and roll with them, but some kids have a harder time than others. I figure I'm getting paid to make sure not only do the kids stay alive and eat reasonably healthy food, I'm there to make sure that they have a well-rounded time and use different parts of their brain, don't remain too sedentary, maybe even have them learn or practice a life skill, and clean up after themselves. All this being said, I'm not there to perform a slapstick comedy routine or magic tricks. I'm not there to distract your kids from the fact that you're not there. I'm not a gameshow host. I'm not there to serve and wait on your children either; your kids are old enough to know how to put away their plate away after they eat and spoiling them isn't going to help them any in life. 

The family I was babysitting for recently was perfectly fine and I had no problem with them, just like most of the families I've babysat for. The "entertain" comment simply highlighted an idea that seems to be becoming more the norm for parents of young kids. 

This is going to sound bad at first, but hear me out. I kind of want to encourage parents and babysitters to ignore the kids some. I don't mean all the time or even most of the time, but for at least a small amount of time every day. Kids of any age should be able to occupy themselves for a short amount of time, and if they can't, they're not going to develop that skill if you keep entertaining them at all hours of the day. You should be able to go in the other room to make a sandwich without having to give them an app to play with or finding them a show to watch. They're not going to learn how to come up with their own ideas and think outside the box if you just hand them pre-packaged and organized activities all the time. 

I could go off on so many more tangents from this, but I won't. Although my attitude may appear otherwise because of my mini rant, it was actually nice to babysit again. One kid is so much easier to take care of than 25.