How do you find a good babysitter for your T1 child (and siblings)? We have trained some extended family members, but they are not always available, and my husband and I would love to have an occasional date night. Where do you look, how do you choose a sitter, and how do you train the person you select? Are there resources for training others? I've just winged it for my son's preschool. Thanks!
Hi Alyson,
My kids are now older and are babysitting other T1 kids now! I was able to find babysitters through another local support website here in CA. You can also check out www.safesittings.com which has listings of type 1 babysitters.
Good luck!
Another possibility is to check with your endocrinologist/clinic to see whether any of their older patients, or siblings of patients, babysit. My son's endo clinic keeps a list of T1 teens and/or siblings willing to babysit younger T1 children. They were out of their MINDS with excitement when my son's daycare provider and her assistants all got training to manage Eric's diabetes — knowing that they had even one trained daycare provider was that ground-breaking to them!
I did check with our endocrinologist, and they initially said they kept a board for teens to post their own info, but later they told me due to privacy reasons, the office couldn't release any info regarding other patients.
Wow, hard to believe there are so few trained people and childcare places out there! It's great that your center's teachers all got trained. Thanks for the suggestion!
Good morning Patti:
Thank you so much for the link. I have been thinking of the same and I went to the website and there is one person in my area. I acutally just emailed her.... Let's see how it goes.
Thanks a million,
Arianna Lamosa
Thanks for the link, Patti! I tried it, but there is no one within 50 miles of me. :( I am trying to find someone through www.care.com, which has a 'Special Needs' section.
Brilliant.
(Sorry this plan didn't work out! I should have read the thread to completion.)
Our best babysitter is a high school boy who has had T1 since he was nine. He's amazing. I pay him well in an attempt to get him addicted to our money. Unfortunately, he is very handsome and popular so is often busy!
I would like to swap babysitting with other T1 parents, but we go out so infrequently I haven't really been motivated to reach out yet. There are 2 other parents of little T1's in our town that I have heard of.
Before diabetes, we had two babysitters who I definitely would have been comfortable training: 17 year old girls who played in the orchestra and ran cross country. They were so disciplined and competent! If a T1 person or parent is not an option, I'd go with orchestra/cross country runners!
Check out care.com in the special needs sector