$ For Teen Babysitter

[NiBeKa]

How much does your teen make as a babysitter for friends/neighbors/family's children? My daughter is never sure how to answer this question when asked by clients and I haven't paid a sitter in years. Thanks

[mommyto3girls]

It really depends on where you live. WE are in a middle to upper middle class suburb in the midwest and the going rate here is $5-6 an hour. However I know people in Seattle, New York, the DC Area, who pay $10-12 and hour. I imagine there are areas where $3 or $4 is the accepted rate.

[sunnysideup]

My daughter get 5-6 an hour.

[sweetfiend]

We are in Northern California and the rate is $5.

[Yoshua]

I always over pay people. Seattle area.


I do 10$ an hour if its 1-3 hours or I do 35-40$ for an entire night if they don't mind keeping the boy till 8 or 9 the next morning.


Plus if they are at my place I'd do frozen pizza's but we havent had that yet.

[treemom2]

We do $5 an hour per child--so usually $10 per hour. We also leave money for them to go out to eat at the local eatery and we pay for the babysitters food as well.

[chel]

treemom2- Do you let the babysitter drive or are you in an area with something walkable. I just find teen drivers very scary.

I pay $6-7 for a young teen (13 yrs-on the young side but dd is easy and it's usually for 2-4hrs, though last time she covered dd with marker tattoos including face and did a really bad nail job on dd, all on a late school night: so dd needed to go right to bed when I got home and no time for a shower before school, I'd just given her a bath before the sitter came: )

[treemom2]

Originally Posted by chel

treemom2- Do you let the babysitter drive or are you in an area with something walkable. I just find teen drivers very scary.

It's only a couple blocks away so they all walk together. I don't think I would let my children ride with a teen yet either!!

[Debstmomy]

My dd gets paid around $5-$10 an hour. Depends on who she is watching & if she is there alone (with me!) or not. Last time someone paid her with a gift card & my dd thought that rocked!!!

[NiBeKa]

Thanks everybody. That is about what my dd gets paid too. $5-$8 depending on time of day and # of kids. Wow, everyone on this site is so quick to help a fellow parent.

[Isaac'sMa]

Wow! I saw this thread and was very curious about other areas... We're in Baltimore and the going rate seems to be between $10-15 an hour! At least that's what all the sitters we have called have told us they charge. Luckily we've been able to rely on family or else we'd be in the poorhouse!

[hipumpkins]

Twice by 2 completely differnt gilrs I hae been told 14.00 an hour!!! Althoguh they will accept less if that isn't doable. :

[Tinas3muskateers]

Kay charges 3 an hour, we are in PA. I know when Kay was little and we lived in NJ we would be charged closer to 10 an hour, so I think it depends on where you are.

[mamaroni]

I am paying about $7.50 an hour for my 3 kids. we are in the the suburbs of detroit. In the summer we spend a lot of time in northern michigan, and we use a couple of teenaged sisters, and they are paid about $6.50 an hour. We always round up. Every teenager I've ever asked "how much do you get paid an hour to babysit" says 'whatever you think, i don't really know'.

[PajamaMama]

The teenage boy who occasionally mows our yard charges $20. It takes him less than 2 hours to do this work. I would not dream of paying a teenage girl less money to take care of my kids than I would pay the boy to mow my grass, kwim? So if you don't know what to pay your babysitter, think about what you would pay a teen doing other kinds of work.

[lesliesara63]

My dd goes to a HDCP and she has a 13 yr old dd. If Shelby comes over to babysit I pay her $5/hr. The problem I have is that I pay her mother $25/day. So if Shelby comes for 6hrs I owe her more than what mom gets for the whole day. It hasn't actually happened yet so I'm not sure how to handle that.

[angelpie545]

For me, it depends on the sitter. I'm pretty picky about who I use for my kids, and I expect a lot out of them, but I pay about 12-13 an hour depending on how hard the job is going to be. Seattle area, also.

[Vampyre500]

I paid $10 per hour for three kids and would never let a sitter leave with less than $20. I expect that a sitter will have already paid their own money to go through the red cross CPR course for babysitters and I want to help cover that overhead.

If your daughter has friends who babysit, have her ask them how much they generally get paid per hour so you know what's about right for your area.

[Ambrose]

I pay the babysitter between $5-7/hr. I think the longest she babysat at one time was 3 hours and we gave her $20.

Our babysitter never gave us a rate she just said whatever you can afford. I tend to pay a little more than we can afford just because she is such a GOOD babysitter. Since we don't use babysitters often, I'd rather pay her a little more than I can afford, letting her know that we appreciate her work and so she continues to treat my DD as well as she does. (She even INTERACTS with DD! We came home early one day and they didn't realize we were back at first because they were too busy playing musical instruments in the bedroom )

[Inci]

Babysitting wages depend on the sitter's age and experience, the area you live in, how many kids you have, etc.
I babysat all through my teen years, and received about $7/hr, on average. After I had been caring for one family's children consistently for a couple years, they gave me a raise, to $10/hr.
I still babysit occasionally, in addition to working full-time elsewhere, and receive $10/hr on average, although some families give me $12-15, and I do accept less from families who can't afford my usual rates. When babysitting is not my main source of income, I can be flexible about rates. When asked what I charge, I say that the general range is $8-12, but that I leave it up to the parents to decide.

If a teenager is old enough to make minimum wage at a job elsewhere, she should earn at least that much for babysitting.
I believe that when you are literally entrusting a person with your children's lives, she should be compensated at the highest rate that you can afford, regardless of her age. It doesn't make sense to pay someone more money to cut your hair or mow your lawn, when the services they are performing are so unimportant in comparison. JMO.

For many years during my teens and early 20s, babysitting was my main source of income. Usually I pieced together several part-time sitting jobs, to total 30-40 hrs/wk. Babysitting was my JOB job, not just something on the side, and I took it very seriously. I am grateful to the families for paying me enough money so that it was *possible* for me to have that be my main source of income.