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Choose Your Babysitter Carefully

Good babysitters are treasures worth their weight in gold. Parents agonize over the decision to leave a young child in their care, and are always on the lookout for good babysitting leads. Some parents have been known to keep the names of their favorite babysitters secret-even from their closest friends.

It's easy to understand why babysitters are so important. Parents want to be able to go out knowing their children will be safe and well cared for. The responsibility does not stop with safety, however. Parents know how impressionable young minds are. Youngsters are like sponges, soaking up all they see and hear. So the models that parents introduce to their children can have a big influence.

Here's a partial list of what parents are looking for:

1. Good babysitters will be responsible. They will pay attention to the kids and put their welfare at the top of the list of priorities.
2. Good babysitters like kids. They enjoy being with them and playing with them. Kids will often sense this, and as they get older, may even look forward to their visits.
3. Good babysitters understand kids. Even without a degree in child development, they have a sense for relating to children. They know what kinds of things they like and how to communicate with them.
4. Good babysitters model appropriate behavior. They know kids will imitate what they see and hear so they are careful about how they act.

Parents who find relatives or neighbors who meet these criteria consider themselves fortunate. Pretty soon the question, "Can I trust this babysitter?" disappears. The new worry becomes, "Will she be available?"

With the arrival of the Information Age, a new babysitter has arrived on the scene. This one is always available and is able to keep kids occupied for hours on end. The convenience features are tremendous-no phone calls, no advance scheduling, no transportation needed. To top it off, this new babysitter doesn't even charge! Of course, the babysitter I'm talking about is the television set.

Most parents have probably taken advantage of the convenience of the electronic babysitter from time to time. It sure does make it easier to get dinner on the table. Unfortunately, television doesn't always match up very well with the criteria for a good babysitter. While there are some excellent programs for children, too many are more interested in our kids as consumers rather than as learners. Many programs aimed at children are nothing more than thirty-minute advertisements.

If that weren't bad enough, at any time of the day there are programs on that serve generous helpings of violence, sex, crude language, and plenty of antisocial behavior. If we let our kids turn the set on to keep occupied, the odds are they will be tuning into programs that model behavior that are the exact opposite of the type we'd like them to pick up.

Imagine if I came home one afternoon and found the babysitter I had hired talking with my kids in the family room using crude language, telling off colored jokes, and encouraging them to fight and put one another down. What would I do? Well, for sure that would be the last time I ever left my kids with him. Every one of us has a much more powerful and persuasive babysitter in our house every day-the television. We have to be as careful with the electronic sitter as we are with the human variety.

Here are some tips in choosing the electronic babysitter.

1. 1. Use TV as a babysitter sparingly. While no one can fault the parent who turns the kids over to the TV in a crunch, don't make it a regular thing. Viewing patterns get set at an early age.
2. 2. Monitor the content. Know what's on before you give permission to watch TV. We might want to think twice if we find ourselves saying, "Quit bothering me. Why don't you go see if there's something on TV until dinner is ready."
3. 3. Make sure school aged kids have something to do after school. TV ends up being the de facto babysitter for millions of kids after school. Many of the programs on at that time are inappropriate for kids.

It would be nice if we could turn our kids over to television without worrying that they're going to be picking up all kinds of things that aren't good for them. Unfortunately we can't. Therefore we have to be as careful picking out an electronic babysitter as we would a live one.