How to Match Your Child’s Personality With a College Sitter

As college students prepare to come home for the summer season, that means you have more babysitters to choose from as a parent. With more free time on your hands, you can go out and enjoy your summertime, knowing your kids are safe with their sitters. But how do you pick the best college sitter for your child? More importantly, how do you match your child’s personality with a sitter?

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To ensure everyone can enjoy their spring and summer, we have a step-by-step guide to help you pick the best sitter for your family, especially one who matches your child’s personality type.

This guide is divided into four sections: The Search, The Four Personality Types (The Leader, The Socializer, The Thinker, and The Supporter), and The Visit.

The Search

Your search is the foundation for your babysitting success. The more you narrow down on personality types and specific skills you and your child are looking for, the better your applicant pool will be and the sooner you’ll find the match. For beginners, our Dos and Don’ts of Hiring a Babysitter is a great place to start. For more seasoned parents, some tips for finding a new babysitter are:

• Outline your Child’s Needs Early: Their needs are the core of your search. If you know in advance that they need special medical attention, put that at the top of your list and follow with needs to wants.
• Take Internal Referrals First: If you have friends with similar needs and wants, ask them who they found to simplify the search. Chances are, your child has encountered this babysitter and will feel more comfortable with them than with a new face.
• Conduct an In-Person Interview: Once you’ve found them and conducted an in-depth background check, you should hold an in-person interview to get a feel for them before they meet your child. During this interview, you can ask them:
  • How do you handle diverse personalities with multiple children?
  • What activities do you like to use when trying to get all kids involved?
  • How would you best describe your personality?
  • Do you prefer for the children to lead playtime, or are you more hands-on?

The Four Personality Types

While there are many personalities in the world, some overlapping with others, there are four major types you can start with to understand your child’s personality better. These are: The Leader, The Socializer, The Thinker, and The Supporter. To match your potential babysitter with these types, they are most likely:

• The Leader
  • More motivated and/or engaged with action and control
  • Are often strong-willed, outspoken, independent, and logical
  • Thrive better with routine, satisfied with self-control
  • May struggle with releasing control or being dependent
• The Socializer
  • More engaged with attention and fun activities, less about control
  • Often imaginative, talkative, playful, and adventurous
  • Thrive with positive reinforcement and more spontaneous activity
  • May dislike routines and being left in boredom
• The Thinker
  • Highly attuned with detail and often strives for perfection
  • Are more analytical, precise, private, and organized
  • Thrive with open-ended questions/activities that encourage thinking
  • Will shut down if their autonomy is not respected or their feelings are not heard
• The Supporter
  • Often the happiest with cooperative play and peaceful activities
  • Thoughtful, caring, may be non-confrontational, and collaborative
  • Thrive with open affection and one-on-one time
  • Not having space to feel their emotions will cause overwhelm

In some cases, a leader and thinker personality type can overlap, alongside a socializer and supporter. Some siblings can have opposite personalities, such as a socializer and a thinker, which may differ in playtime. But, with these key types in mind, you can best match collaborative babysitters with supporters, logical babysitters with thinkers, outgoing babysitters with socializers, and more free-range babysitters with leaders to ensure each child and babysitter can get along. Or a jack-of-all-trades babysitter can fit all of your children’s needs. For a more in-depth discussion on alignment, check out The Babysitter-Parent Alignment Checklist.

The Visit

For the visit, you can do one of two things. 1) You can conduct a trial run. 2) You can hit the ground running with a real babysitting session. Both cases are fine as needs vary among each household, so you can pick based on the following information:

• Trial Run: A trial run is a babysitting session in which you remain in the house while the babysitter interacts with your child. How this works for you is:
  • Your child feels safe with you around to monitor the session
  • You can look for genuine engagement from both parties
  • You can assess how your babysitter handles conflict or tantrums
• A Regular Babysitting Session: If timing doesn’t give you the chance to have a trial run, a regular session is still safe to conduct. It can work through:
  • Having cameras to watch periodically
  • Debriefing with both the babysitter and your child at the end of the session
  • Making it a shorter session so it’s not too different for your child to handle

Best of luck in your babysitting search!