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If Your Child is the Baby-Sitter

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What Should Your Child Know
Other Helpful Resources

What Should Your Child Know:

Before caring for a baby or young child (yours or someone else's), your child should obtain the proper training from a professional organization. You should know all of these things too, so that if your child calls you for help, you know what to do. A sample of some of the things your and your child should know:

	How to play with a child, how to soothe and comfort a child, how to diaper, feed and properly clothe a child, how to bathe a child, how to handle a baby and young child, how to prevent choking or sunburn, how to administer medication
	What his or her limitations are (afraid of water, allergic to pets, upset by babies who cry, faints at the sight of blood, etc.)
	Basic first aid and CPR (remember that infant CPR differs from adult CPR)
	The signs of shaken baby syndrome and how to prevent it.
	How to gently discipline a child
	How to handle a stressful situation
	What to do in an emergency (if the house starts on fire, if the baby is lost or stolen, if the baby is hurt, if the baby seems ill, if the baby won't stop crying and he or she is losing control, etc.)
	Names and numbers of emergency and other helpful resources, such as fire, police, poison control, etc.
	That if something's happening that your child doesn't understand, or if the baby or child he or she is caring for is behaving at all abnormally, help should be called right away. Emergency staff will never mind finding out that it was a false alarm.
	To call parents with questions. Many baby-sitters will try to bluff their way through a potentially dangerous situation -- when help is just around the corner.
	How to use and answer the telephone
	How to protect the child from abductors and other dangerous people Go to top

Other Helpful Resources:

	"What to Expect Baby-Sitter's Handbook" - a book by Heidi Murkoff
	For an excellent resource for your baby-sitting child called "The Super Sitter," e-mail the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission at publications@cpsc.gov. Ask them for the publication, and give them your name and mailing address. You should receive it in a few days. You also can obtain it online at http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/Sitter.pdf (Note: This is a PDF file. In order to view any PDF file, you will need software called Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don't have it, you can download it for free here).
	American Red Cross - for caregiver and baby-sitting training programs
	Canada Safety Council - for caregiver and baby-sitting training programs
	Your local hospital or other local organization might have training programs
	Typically, occasional baby-sitting in the home isn't regulated by the state until it wanders into the area of family day care (check with your state department of Health and Welfare for the regulations).

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