A Great Way to Book Babysitters

I’m psyched to try this, thanks for the code! We live in Chicago and I went to college with the founder of Sittercity, but had never heard of this service until now.

These pictures are absolutely precious. I hope Date Night Now comes to San Francisco soon. We have other similar companies but I haven’t found any sitters that stick with me yet.

I’m going to tell my daughter about this. She’s 24, living in Manhattan and adores kids. She was never sure how to go about finding someone who needed a babysitter :)

oh wow – thanks for the free night of babysitting – i’ll definitely be taking you up on this!

oh yay it’s the babysitters club in the digital age!

Thanks so much, Joanna! This is SO great to know. I’m going to spread the word to my friends in the city. (Too bad we’re from Northern NJ!)

I actually like this idea. I don’t have a kid yet, and I live in a Canadian city so it’s not like something like this will come here… probably ever… but it’s a cool concept.

I was a babysitter with Sittercity in Portland, Oregon for about a year a half (during 2011-2012), and that combined with being an office temp for a great agency, was a solution for me to stay flexible and enjoy a variety of jobs before moving oversees for a while (while also preparing to get married and then have my own baby and now another on the way). Sittercity was great for me. I ended cultivating a consistent relationship with five families, each with kids of different ages. It ended up being being a very meaningful experience, as it prepared me for having my own kids. I got to preview and experience different techniques across a spectrum – making baby food versus store bought, cloth diapers versus disposable, kinds of schedules, parenting styles, bed times, bed time routines, amount of toys, books, etc.

I hadn’t heard of Date Night Now but was happy to see that it is associated with Sittercity. I used to do on-call, last minute jobs through Sittercity when people would come into town and wanted to go out while I watched their baby in a hotel room. This reminded me of that somewhat. It was all very fun. That said, as one mother put it, it does require a lot of trust. It might not be for all parents, but when it works, Sittercity is a well-developed tool. I thought I would give the sitter perspective a bit, in case it would be of interest to anyone.

This sounds great! I hope this is coming to Portland soon!!

Cool service. Anton looks so darn charming. We’ve hit the jackpot with our sitter – I believe in hiring 13 and 14 year olds and training them for their first job when they’re still cheap :) since we don’t have babies. Our current sitter is available anytime we want – she’s never said no.

While in theory I like the idea of finding a sitter so quickly via the web (and I do find initially sitters that way, but not for same-day work), I need to try out my sitters and get to know them, check their references, watch them in action, etc, before I’d leave them alone for a date (or leave them alone in the daytime). Our kids are so young (going on 5 and 2), and won’t stay that way for long, and we are so fortunate to have them, we don’t mind staying in. Also, they couldn’t report to us any misbehavior, whether the sitter was having friends over, was glued to her phone, etc, etc. My husband and I do at-home after-hours date nights. Maybe later on, we will go out at night again, but only if we have known sitters. Sadly, in the case of abuse, it is more usual that the victim knows the abuser, who is a relative or friend of the family. When our kids were younger, we offered to friends with similarly little kids babysitting services (my husband could stay home with our kids while I watched the other kids). But this did not happen much as everyone was exhausted!

We used sittercity to find our nanny, who’s been with us for 18 months + and also to find an evening baby-sitter. We did meet and interview our evening sitter before leaving her with our toddler, but I think that Date Night Now could be a great service, especially for people who only need occasional help.

I think it’s important to remember that most people are good people, and that the vast majority of people on these websites would do a great job caring for them. Of course we should all be careful and following your gut instincts is important, but I think there is a way to balance caution with a positive outlook on life – and that’s something I want to model for my kids.