{"id":2150,"date":"2021-05-19T21:46:55","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T21:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/s37407.p1377.sites.pressdns.com\/resources\/bye-bye-baby-leaving-your-baby-with-a-sitt\/"},"modified":"2021-05-19T21:46:55","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T21:46:55","slug":"bye-bye-baby-leaving-your-baby-with-a-sitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/bye-bye-baby-leaving-your-baby-with-a-sitt\/","title":{"rendered":"Bye, Bye, Baby: Leaving Your Baby With a Sitter For the First Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As your social and work schedules return to normal, you&rsquo;re probably going to have to have a <a href=\"\/sitter\" title=\"care.com\/sitter\">sitter<\/a> take care of baby, at least when grandma and grandpa are busy. This may bring about a normal, yet emotional reaction, in you known as &ldquo;The Babysitter Blues.&rdquo; Read on for some tips on how to handle this transition.<\/p><h2>Timing<\/h2><p>Your baby is ready for sitter when you are. For many parents, this is when a baby is about six months old. If it&rsquo;s longer for you, that&rsquo;s fine. Just like your child, you may need to take baby steps towards independence:<\/p><ul><li>Start out small. Work up to leaving for extended periods of time. Hire a mother&rsquo;s helper to watch the baby for half an hour to an hour while you go upstairs to dress, bathe, cook dinner, or do the laundry.<\/li><li>Next, try longer visits. Take an hour or two to walk and exercise with the dog, go to a yoga class or hair appointment, or do errands and shopping.<\/li><li>Eventually, you&rsquo;ll be ready for a half day, day, or evening out away from your child. Only you and your partner will know when this time arrives, and that&rsquo;s OK.<\/li><\/ul><h2>Preparing the sitter or mother&rsquo;s helper<\/h2><p>When you&rsquo;re ready to hire outside help, follow these easy steps:<\/p><ul><li>Do an initial phone interview, and then follow up with a face-to-face one so you can assess the caregiver in person. See how she interacts with your child. Be sure to carefully check all references.<\/li><li>On the first day she&rsquo;s scheduled to work, ask her to come over a half hour before you leave. This way your child can see you interact with the sitter, and sitter and child can become acquainted.<\/li><li>Show the sitter where your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.care.com\/child-care-a03111534-checklist-for-a-child-care-medical-emergency.html\" title=\"Emergency Checklist\">list of emergency contact information<\/a> is. Tell her the circumstances under which she should call you, a neighbor, a doctor, and so on.<\/li><li>Point out the food and drinks she can help herself to. (If you have a cake that&rsquo;s for tomorrow&rsquo;s office party, let her know it&rsquo;s off limits, etc.)<\/li><li>Give her a list of activities that will divert your child&rsquo;s attention in the minutes right after you leave.<\/li><li>When you&rsquo;re ready to go, do so swiftly. Don&rsquo;t dawdle.<\/li><\/ul><h2>The bottom line<\/h2><p>If you take your time and communicate carefully, you&rsquo;ll grow to find peace of mind when you leave your child with a <a href=\"\/sitter\" title=\"care.com\/sitter\">sitter<\/a>. Both you and your child will find fuller, richer lives through independence and meaningful relationships with the right child care providers.<\/p><p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/113520747523418127836?rel=author\">Tiffany Smith<\/a> is the senior associate editor here at Care.com. She has written for <\/em>All You<em>, <\/em>Time for Kids<em> and the <\/em>Boston Globe<em>. And as a former babysitter, she knows a lot about fun games to play with kids. Getting them to eat their veggies &mdash; that&rsquo;s a different story! Follow her on Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tiffanyiswrite\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@tiffanyiswrite<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As your social and work schedules return to normal, you&#8217;re probably going to have to have a sitter take care of baby, at least when grandma and grandpa are busy. This may bring about a normal, yet emotional reaction, in you known as &#8220;The Babysitter Blues.&#8221; Read on for some tips on how to handle <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/bye-bye-baby-leaving-your-baby-with-a-sitt\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":790,"featured_media":12248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"enable_toc":false,"care_reviewed_by":0,"care_post_updated_flag":false,"care_updated_date":"","last_update":"2021-05-19","view_count":2659,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"member-type":[4],"vertical":[6,16],"platform":[2],"class_list":["post-2150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","member-type-all","vertical-children","vertical-child-care-options","platform-resources"],"acf":[],"created":"2009-04-10","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/790"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"member-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/member-type?post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/platform?post=2150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}