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What to Actually Do When You're Babysitting

A normal evening, in order, including the parts nobody warns you about.

Well Paid Babysitter · updated 12 September 2026

Most advice about babysitting is a list of tips. Tips are hard to use at seven o'clock on a Friday with a four-year-old refusing to eat. So here is an evening instead, in the order it happens.

This assumes you have the booking already. If you are earlier than that, how to start babysitting covers what to settle before you take one.

The first ten minutes

Arrive fifteen minutes early. Not to be keen, but because the handover is the most useful part of the night and parents on their way out are in a hurry.

Get, out loud, before they leave:

• What the children have eaten and what they are having
• Bedtime, and the actual order of the routine
• Any medicine, the dose, and the time
• What time they will be back
• A number that will be answered, and a second one

Write the medicine one down. Every time, even if it seems simple. It is the only thing on that list where a misremembering matters.

The goodbye

Short. Parents who linger make it worse and children take their cue from the adults. Get the child involved in something before the door opens, then let the parents go.

If there is crying, and there often is, it usually stops within a couple of minutes. Text the parent to tell them so. They are sitting in a car park worrying and that message is worth a great deal to them.

Dinner

Serve what you were told, not what you would eat. If a child refuses, do not fight it. Offer it, leave it, move on. You are not going to fix somebody's eating in one evening and trying is how a calm night turns into a bad one.

Check the allergy list again before anything goes on a plate, including snacks.

The two hours in the middle

This is where the job is actually done, and the thing that makes it easy is having one activity in your head before you arrive.

• Under 3: repetition. Stacking, posting things into other things, the same book four times.
• 3 to 5: anything with a role. Shops, restaurants, doctors. They will do the talking.
• 6 to 8: something with a rule. Card games, drawing games, building with a goal.
• 9 and up: ask them. They will tell you, and being asked is most of it.

Screens are not a failure. Screens as the whole evening is, mostly because the parents will hear about it.

Bedtime

Start earlier than you think, and follow their routine rather than inventing one. The order matters more than the timing to a small child.

Expect the negotiation. Water, one more book, the wrong pajamas, a light that was on last time. The trick is to decide once and be boring about it. Boring wins.

If a child will not settle, sitting quietly in the room usually works better than going back and forth to the door.

After bedtime

Tidy what you used. Not the house, what you used. It takes five minutes and it is the single cheapest thing you can do to get asked back.

Then you are being paid to be available, which is a real part of the job and not dead time. Do not fall asleep and do not have anybody over.

When they get back

Tell them how it actually went, including the difficult parts. "She cried for about ten minutes after you left, then she was fine, and she went down at half seven" is worth more to a parent than "great, no problems".

Sitters who report the hard bits honestly get booked again. Sitters who smooth everything over get found out the first time a child mentions it.

Then get paid, which should not be a negotiation because you agreed it when you took the booking.

If it is a negotiation every time, the problem is upstream. A stated rate and a written cancellation policy fix it, and both are part of treating this as a business.

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