Cost to Raise Today's Kids: More Than $250,000?

According to a Federal report released today, raising a child in the United States now costs more than $250,000. If you look at the details of the report, you'll find that child care costs exceed the cost of food.

As we know here at Babysitting Co-op 101, creative parents working together can significantly reduce or even eliminate child care costs while offering other important benefits to neighborhood families, such as

•  Friends for kids and parents 
• A greater sense of community 
• A spirit of cooperation 
• Free time for parents 

It's easy to feel overwhelmed when reports like this surface, but these reports are based on the gathering of economic data and generalizations about how household finances operate. Child care doesn't have to cost more than food. In fact, it doesn't have to cost anything at all.

Pick up a copy of Babysitting Co-op 101 today to learn how you can eliminate child care costs from your budget while securing quality child care for your kids from adults you know and trust. This book contains everything you need to get your co-op up and running. It's full of resources, encouragement, and success stories.

A Virginia Babysitting-Cop, 50 Years Strong

I thought it was so fun to see a Washington Post news story about the Aurora Hills Babysitting Co-op earlier this month. This co-op has been in operation for 50 years! Just think of that. The original kids who were babysat by the organizers of this co-op could have grandchildren who are currently involved in the co-op. What a great testament to the power of neighborly cooperation. Take a few minutes to read the article, and then get inspired to start your own co-op. Who knows? Maybe your grandkids will be participating someday in the group you organize.

Bettina Lanyi/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Parenting Resource: Learning at Home

Did you realize that you're building your child's cognitive foundation as you read bedtime stories and talk about your day? Our guest blog poster today, Rhonda Cratty, helps us to understand the importance of helping children learn to summarize. Below is an excerpt from Rhonda Cratty's Learning at Home. You can find links to the book at the bottom of this post. Many thanks to Rhonda for sharing her expertise with us.

Teaching your child to summarize is an excerpt from Learning at Home by Rhonda Cratty.

Teaching your Child to Summarize

Teaching children to summarize is no small task. Summarizing is one of the hardest strategies for children to grasp because it requires time and lots of practice. Your child needs to see and hear summarizing modeled. Summarizing is such a valuable strategy it is well worth a few small moments as you read those good night stories.

What is Summarizing?
Summarizing is how we take the gist, the key ideas, the main points that are worth noting and remembering out of a text.

What are We Doing When We Summarize?
When we summarize, we focus on the heart of the work. We try to find the key words and phrases that manage to capture the main idea of what we have read. 

What are Reasonable Summarizing Goals for Children?

-Pull out main ideas

-Focus on key details

-Use only key words and phrases

-Write only enough to convey the main idea

-Take succinct but complete notes of larger ideas

Strategies for Practicing Summarizing

-Have your child practice verbalizing summaries of familiar or interesting topics, such as "What I did during a sport or music practice," or "What I did at school today."

-After you finish reading picture books, use key words or phrases to identify who, what, when, where, why, or how in the story. Who is the story about? What did the characters do?

-Keep a reading diary. If parents do the writing and children do the thinking, this should take just a few minutes.

-Write the title of the book, date and a headline for the story. By summarizing in a headline, your child will begin to sort out main ideas from details of the text. Do not require sentences. Keep it under six words each evening.

-As you read non-fiction, help your child to recognize that sub-titles are summaries. 

-Summarize the lyrics from a favorite song or poem.

-Summarize a movie, field trip, party.

Summarizing is more than retelling it is a higher level of thinking. It involves analyzing information, distinguishing important from unimportant elements then translating large chunks of information into a few short cohesive sentences. Fiction and non-fiction texts, media, conversations, internet information, and events are sources to practice summarizations. Summarizing is an important skill. With the digital age, and the speed at which our children receive new information, summarizing will be imperative to the adults of tomorrow.

Working with summarizing is truly about equipping your children to be lifelong learners.

Learning at Home by Rhonda Cratty is a new parent resource filled with ideas to help children become the best they can be. Daily activities for family fun, that make subjects become more than pencil and paper, moving learning into everyday life. Learning at home can be purchased in print ($8.48) or eBook($4.48) form through http://www.amazon.com/dp/1494917203

For more information please see http://famfunlearn.com/.

Park Days

Summer is almost here, and if your babysitting co-op needs a little social rejuvenation, plan a few park days for the summer. Park days are informal get-togethers where co-op parents and kids can spend some time enjoying the sun and getting to know each other better. This is also a good time to find new neighborhood families if you're looking for a few new members.

To organize summer park days, choose a few specific times when you can meet at a local park. Then send out text messages or emails to inform everyone of the dates. Here's an example:

Sandhills Babysitting Co-op Park Day

We're meeting at Moser Park for some play time and fun!

When: Fridays in June

What Time: 11:30

Where: Moser Park, corner of Washington & 22nd

Bring a lunch and join us for an hour or two of play time. There's a sandbox, so bring sand toys if you want. Invite friends or neighbors who might be interested in joining our babysitting co-op. See you there!

Make sure you don't schedule your park days over an existing babysitting shift, or someone will be stuck at home while you're all enjoying yourselves in the sunshine. Summer park days are also a great time for school-age kids to feel like they're a part of the babysitting co-op as well. You may find yourself looking forward to park days as much as your kids do!

5 Top Money-Saving Tips: Guest Post from Everyday Life on a Shoestring

If you haven't visited Sarah's Everyday Life on a Shoestring, it's high time you did. This blog is full of fantastic money-saving tips for parents of young children. It's personable, friendly, and charming, and we're honored to have Sarah with us on Babysitting Co-op 101 today. She's sharing some of her best money-saving tips with us. After you finish reading this post, we suggest you hop on over to her blog and learn some more!

Having kids is an expensive business. According to the Guardian newspaper, in 2013 the cost of raising a child in the UK has risen to an astronomical £222,458 ($374,042).

You would be right in thinking that the expensive part of raising a child would be getting them through college or university, but the next most expensive years are from age 1 to 5.

Armed with that knowledge, how can parents of young children save money?

Here are our five top tips (excluding childcare, which is well catered for on this blog!)

1. The Guardian cites parental guilt over technological gadgets as another major cost; UK expenditure on kit for kids amounts to £302 annually. For young children this simply isn’t necessary. We all know that too much screen time is not good for anyone, especially young children. Our kids are expected to use the family computer and TV rather than having their own and a secondhand console is used for games. Both kids now have phones, but are on the cheapest contract we could find. This approach has not impaired them in any way – they are digital natives and are far more literate in all this stuff than I am.
2. Buying secondhand also applies to many other things that have been required. From birth we bought clothes, toys, baby equipment, buggies and books secondhand, as well as never saying no to any offers of hand-me-downs. The world is awash with plastic toys and kids equipment, so don’t contribute to this ocean by buying new. Check out charity shops, eBay, school sales and Freecycle.
3. From an early age, encourage children to save their own birthday, Christmas or pocket money to buy the things that they want. This teaches them the value of things and helps clarify whether an item is something they really want or just a whim.
   
4. Avoid peer pressure! Just because other friends are going on expensive holidays or cinema trips, attend multiple after-school clubs, or have the latest gadget, it doesn’t mean that everyone has to. A camping holiday, playing in the garden at home, having a friend to play or watching a DVD together as a family can be just as fun. And today’s busy children need down-time as much as we do.
5. The best things in life really are free! Parks, puddles, trees, the sky, museums, libraries, street entertainers, time with friends and family. It’s all available if you seek it out and costs nothing!
   

Many thanks to Sarah at Everyday Life On a Shoestring for this post!

McLean Gardens Babysitting Co-op

The McLean Gardens Babysitting Co-op in Washington, D.C., has been operating for more than 10 years. Based on Gary Myers' Smart Mom's Baby-sitting Co-op Handbook, this co-op usually has about 10 to 15 families at any given time. Parents in the co-op have graciously shared some details about how the co-op works to help people who are thinking about starting their own co-ops.

Structure

The McLean Gardens Babysitting Co-op works on a point system, and a secretary handles all transactions. If you want to find a sitter, you call or e-mail the secretary who arranges a sit for you by sending out an email to everyone to see who's available. After the sit is over, the sitter contacts the secretary to report the amount of time that should be deducted and added to each parent's total.

As parents come into the co-op, they start with a zero point balance. They earn points by babysitting, but they can "go into debt" and have a negative point balance as well. When people leave the co-op, they're supposed to pay an hourly fee to the co-op for any points below zero.

Communication

The parents in the McLean Gardens Babysitting Co-op have set up a Yahoo groups e-mail distribution list, which they use for setting up sits as well as communicating about monthly meetings. They also keep a database of points on paper that gets passed from secretary to secretary.

Roles

There are several roles that have to filled at all times for this type of co-op to function: Leader, Secretary, Treasurer, and List Serve Manager. The Secretary role rotates monthly among the members, and the Treasurer and List Serve Managers rotate quarterly:

• Leader. The leader makes sure the co-op runs smoothly, settles any issues, and organizes monthly meetings. This role rotates quarterly.
• Secretary. As you probably noticed from the description above, the Secretary is a busy person. That's why this job switches monthly. Taking requests and finding sitters can be time-consuming, but the Secretary is compensated with extra points. The secretary receives 2 points from each person in the co-op during his or her month in office.
• Treasurer. The treasurer keeps track of the money for the co-op. The McLean Gardens Babysitting Co-op collects $20 per family per year. The Treasurer is compensated with 1 point per quarter per family, and the job rotates monthly.
• List Serve Manager. The List Serve Manager maintains and operates the List Serve and earns 1 point per quarter from each family. List Serve Managers serve for one quarter at a time.

Benefits

Members of the McLean Gardens Babysitting Co-op enjoy many benefits, including the following:

• Great community. Most of the co-op members live within walking distance of one another. They're very supportive of each other. If one parent is late getting back from a doctor appointment, she know she can send out a text and have somebody else pick her kids up from school.
• Hand-me-downs. This co-op doesn't just help each other with child care; they also pass around gently used clothing.
• Social gatherings. Co-op members get together bi-monthly for social gatherings where they can get to know new members and enjoy each other's company.

If you're in the D.C. area and want to know more about the McLean Gardens Babysitting Co-op, you can email them at mgbcsits@gmail.com.

This co-op is a great example of what a babysitting co-op can do for you. It's structured differently than the co-ops you can learn about in Babysitting Co-op 101, which don't rely on a secretary or require fees, but the principles of cooperation and mutual benefit are the same. Again, we thank the members of McLean Gardens Babysitting Co-op for sharing their expertise and experiences with us.

Goodreads Giveaway!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Babysitting Co-op 101

by Samantha Fogg Nielsen

Giveaway ends March 31, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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