Tales from a Babysitter: A kid again

Life is good when you’re a child. You get to draw, play outside, dress up, and do all sorts of fun activities. Kids wear a mask of innocence and they aren’t concerned with what they’re doing or who is watching. They worry about few things and are at the age where they just don’t care.

I never feel more like a kid than when I am baby-sitting. In order to entertain, I get to goof off and be as silly as the kids are. Being as energetic as they always are can be a little difficult, but I can usually manage. Besides, it’s one of my favorite things to do as a babysitter, go wild to have fun with the kids I’m watching.

Juliana and Max are two kids that I baby-sit every once and a while. One night, Juliana wanted to show me her new soundtrack of “Mamma Mia”. We had been wearing brightly colored boas and pretending to be glamorous movie stars. When the music started playing, she started dancing and encouraged me to join in. Of course, I couldn’t resist and soon we had danced enthusiastically through many of the songs. By our laughter, anyone could tell we were both having a great time as we made up different moves and sang along loudly to the songs we knew.

Being with kids is like being able to be anything and anyone you want. They don’t care if you mess up or look silly, partially because they don’t know that you did but also because they’re not trying to find fault in you. They’re carefree and living life as if no one’s watching. But even if someone was, I don’t think they’d mind.

My mom once told me that we are who we are when we’re at home, but I think it’s when I baby-sit. That’s not to say that I’m actually an irresponsible and crazy person, but that when I’m with kids, I’m not worrying about what others are thinking of me. I can be whoever and whatever and the kids won’t have a thing to say against it.

I wish that I could live as carefree as kids always are and be without worries or concerns. But life isn’t that simple. So whenever I baby-sit, I get let loose and give in to my “inner child”. I think I’m a good babysitter because the kids can see me as another playmate. Of course, whenever I baby-sit, I’m not mindless of their actions and I stay in charge due to the responsibility I was given. But I think kids like me because I don’t just watch them, I play with them and they probably feel like they can relate to me in some form or another.

Hearing children laugh is another great part of babysitting. So I do my best to make sure they do. And that’s my advice to all babysitters out there: if you have genuine fun yourself, the kids will too and the job will become very easy, very fast. If a kid likes you, they’ll be bound to want to listen to you more. So let go and when you baby-sit, be a kid again.

Tags: duluth east, greyhound blogs