3 Things to Look for in a Babysitter

Sometimes when you are busy, when you are short on help, when there just aren't any other options available to you there is a temptation to just let anyone who is available babysit your kids.

Unfortunately this is not the greatest idea. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency in the United States 4 percent of the reported crimes committed against children in the form of neglect, assault or sexual abuse are committed by babysitter. This is why it is so important to really be able to assess the character and then predict the behavior of anyone that you hire to look after your child!

Lots of the time we assume that a friend or relative is the best choice to look after our kids. This is not always true unless the candidate has demonstrated to you that he or she is –
1. Mature
2. Responsible
3. Capable

As you know 'liking the person', familiarity with the person and even age may have nothing to do with this. Some of the most likeable people in the world don't like kids or may do you 'the favor' of looking after your kids because he or she feels obligated.

Furthermore familiarity with a person does not always mean that they are familiar with how to look kids or the basics of First Aid. In fact, if you really think about it, some of the people we are most familiar with in our lives, especially family members, tend to lean towards the dysfunctional side (but we love them anyway!)

Also, 'being responsible' does not necessarily come with age. There are lots of sixty year old out there that are much more thoughtless and reckless than the sixteen year old down the street.

Then there is the issue of capability. If you have a toddler going through the 'terrible twos' you do not want to have someone frail or nervous looking after your kid. You want someone who knows how to dry tears, bribe a kid out of it or give him or her Time-Out. You want someone skilled with children and someone who is able to 'make the call' about whether or not to take a trip to emergency if your child is hurt.
In a nutshell, you want an individual who is mature, responsible and capable because anyone who fulfills those three criteria is going to be someone that you can trust when you are not at home!

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Microsoft Vine for Worried Moms

Earthquakes, volcanoes and floods. It makes a mom wonder what theworld I is coming . Microsoft has come up with a program that keeps ordinary citizens in the loop when it comes to emergency response. You won't have to rely on tweeting, cell phones or Facebook any more to find out what is going on in the world. By the way if you own a Mac this is not a blog you are going want to readas it Vine does not function well on Macs.

 

Microsoft Vine can be described a new social networking tool, designed to help its users keep tabs on people and places during any kind of emergency situations. Currently in a beta test in Seattle, the service lets you enter a location and see news reports gathered from twenty thousand places including United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This can help you get updates from other big organizations.

 

For example let's just say that there is a worldwide flu pandemic. Still you want the kids to go visit grandma. You could get updates directly from the World Health Organization about where the worst cases of the epidemic is, about school or road closures or about the number of people affected by it so that when you put them on that train you know they will be safe.

 

You can enter the people you want to be in contact with on Microsoft Vine. You can then receive an email message about them on the Vine dashboard. It is the ideal way to keep in touch with someone in case of a disaster. I think every woman's babysitter sould have this.

 

There is a map overlay in the program that allows you to track where everyone is online. You also have a status update like Twitter does and it also can feed your Facebook account. This could be valuable for your friends who are not on Vine like you are but still need to know where you are and where you might be going in the event of a disaster.

 

You can also use Microsoft Vine to let people know where you are and you can issue a report with emergency contact information. This is a good way to let people know where you are going and how long you will be gone.

 

The great thing about this program is that it cuts the tweeting and gets down only to the bare basics of where you will be during an emergency. There is not casual talk allowed on this thing. It is a good thing for you and your teenager to have.

 

People are already using Twitter to let friends and family know about big emergencies. Vine does not use traditional GPS based location awareness. This makes it less than ideal for critical emergency communications but it is better than maybe trying to navigate solely through Twitter or Facebook because there is not a lot of casual talk in the way.

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