Balancing Multiple Babysitters: Coordinating Student Sitters Over Holidays & Breaks

While college students make excellent babysitters, the holiday season means they might not be as available as you’re used to. Not only do they have their own family to spend time with, but they might live far away from campus or have trips planned. While some college students live off-campus and can stay there during the breaks, students who live off-campus are usually required to vacate their dorms during breaks. This may require you to pick up extra sitters, so let’s hope you have some already prescreened!

However, holiday breaks also impact your children. They’ll likely be on break while you’re still working for a few days.

Whether you normally balance a couple of babysitters or not to help you take care of your kids, you’re going to have to make a bigger effort to coordinate your college sitters during the holiday season and the holiday breaks. Balancing multiple babysitters can be difficult, but extremely necessary to ensure you have adequate childcare over holidays and breaks. It’s never too early to start coordinating your college student sitters during this time. In fact, the earlier you can prepare, the better!

via Pexels

Plan Ahead

As I mentioned above, it’s best if you prepare as early as possible. Waiting until the last minute can be detrimental. You’ll have to start this process at least one month in advance. Your college student sitters will already know of their holiday break dates and if they are or are not going home. Start this conversation early, so you and your sitters can plan around you as well. How many of your current sitters can you count on?

You also need to plan your own schedule to streamline the process. When are you going to use your vacation or paid time off? Are there holiday parties you’re going to attend that rely on evening coverage? Any family trips you plan on taking? This way, you can set your expectations before reaching out about babysitting over the holidays and breaks.

Clear Communication

Above everything, you need to communicate clearly with all of your babysitters. If they haven’t already brought up holiday and break plans, you need to ask them what they have planned and if they will or will not be available to babysit your children when you need them to be. In fact, it might be worth gathering everyone together to speak, rather than just reaching out to your college student sitters. They’re not each other’s competition; you are all a team! Teams work best together when everyone is on the same page and understands their needs and expectations.

Shared Calendars

One of the best ways to balance multiple babysitters is to use a shared digital calendar that everyone can view and edit. This way, everyone, including you, your family, and all of your college student sitters can access this important living document and get on the same wavelength. You can start off by filling in your children’s days off, as well as your time off and other events this holiday season. This gives you a clear and laid-out view of when you need childcare. From there, urge your babysitters to provide and fill in their own prior commitments so that everyone can see who will not be available on certain days and where you might be missing necessary coverage. A shared calendar allows you to coordinate all of your schedules and ensure that there are no gaps across all of your babysitters.

Keep Your Routine

Having a consistent and stable routine is extremely helpful when you’re balancing multiple babysitters and children. While the holiday season can be unpredictable, sticking to your routine will benefit not only you, but your babysitters, and also your children. Children thrive on routines and like knowing what’s planned, which babysitter they’re seeing. Even while holiday breaks disrupt your normal schedule, set something up for their days off from school. Keep bedtime at the normal time, if possible, and keep your children engaged with fun and stimulating activities.

Be Flexible

Some of your college student sitters will have more time than others over holidays and breaks, so you do need to be flexible. I understand that flexibility can be difficult, especially when you have plans, but that’s why it is so important to start this early! If one sitter isn’t available until six in the evening, see if you can push your other plans back until seven so your babysitter has time to arrive and settle into the aforementioned routine. Once again, you’re all a team! You need to work together to figure out when your childcare will be taken care of.

As you cherish and celebrate your family this holiday season, don’t let your communication skills fall short so that you can easily balance multiple babysitters. Keep planning ahead and coordinating college student sitters over holidays and breaks will be easy!