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What you're actually being asked to do
Describe the babysitting job in one sentence of your own, with safe and well ahead of everything else.
1Watch
Two evenings
Two evenings
Split screen, two sitters. Left: on the sofa, phone up, the child somewhere upstairs. Right: on the floor, the child in view, phone face down on the side. A thud from upstairs on the left, and the film stops as that sitter looks up.
20 secondsBoth of them would say they were babysitting. Watch what each of them actually knows.
2The idea
The job in one sentence
Parents hire you for one thing. When they walk back in, their child is safe and well. Not entertained, not asleep by eight, not with a tidy kitchen. Those are nice, and you will do them, but they are not the job. The job is keeping a child safe and well until their parent walks back in.
In practice that means you know where the child is, all the time. You know what they are doing. You notice when something changes. Snacks, games, tidying and telly all sit underneath that. When any of them competes with knowing where the child is, safe wins, every time, without a debate.
3The idea
Safe and well are two different things
Safe means not hurt, not able to get hurt, and somewhere you can see or hear them. Well means fed, warm, dry, not frightened, and not left crying in a room for an hour because you were busy. A child can be safe and not well. The parent will ask about both.
So there are two questions you ask yourself, every ten minutes or so, without thinking about it. Where are they? What are they doing? If you can answer both without getting up, fine. If you cannot, get up. That habit is most of the job, and the rest of this badge is built on it.
4Look
The room, from the sofa
The room, from the sofa
A living room seen from the sofa: a doorway into a kitchen, the foot of the stairs, and a toddler visible on a play mat with a box of blocks.
Everything you need to know is in this frame. The moment the toddler leaves it, so do you.
5The idea
Jordan, seven o'clock
Jordan is sitting for Ivy, who is four. Ivy is watching a film. Jordan’s phone buzzes. Before he reads it he checks: Ivy on the sofa, film on, nothing in reach she should not have. He reads the message, replies in one line, puts the phone face down. That took twenty seconds and it was fine.
Ten minutes later Ivy is in the kitchen and it has gone quiet. Jordan gets up. Quiet is not a break. Quiet is a reason to look. Ivy is standing on a chair reaching for the biscuit tin. Nothing happened, because he looked. That is what the job looks like when it is going right: nothing happening, on purpose.
6Decide
The parents are back in an hour. Which of these is actually the job?
Pick one to carry on.
7Build it
Rank the ten duties
Ten duties
Ten cards: know where the child is, keep hazards out of reach, feed them what the parents said, follow the bedtime routine, tidy up, stop the child crying, entertain them, answer your own messages, tell the parents anything that happened, lock the doors. Drag them into order, then see the order a hiring parent would put them in.
Notice what drops to the bottom. Tidying is nice. Entertaining is nice. Neither is the job.
8Find them
Which of these are part of the job?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Do it
Before you leave this page
Write one sentence, on paper, that says what the babysitting job is. Your words, not ours. Read it to a parent and ask whether they would hire the person who wrote it.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
The job is keeping a child safe and well until their parent walks back in. Everything else is extra.
Next lesson: In charge means in charge