| Caring for children |
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| At home |
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| Outside the home |
| Educational settings |
| Institutions and standards |
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Babysitting is the practice of temporarily caring for a child on behalf of the child's parents. Babysitting is commonly performed as an odd job by teenagers for extra money.
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Babysitters can range in age, tending to be in their pre-teens/teens, ages 11–19, yet it is not uncommon for students in their 20s to take on babysitting as a part-time job. The type of work for babysitters also varies, from watching a sleeping child, to playing games, preparing meals, teaching the child to read, or even driving (if the age is right), depending on the agreed upon terms and determined by parental permission.
In some countries various organizations produce courses for babysitters, mainly focusing on child safety and first aid appropriate for infants and children. These classes or courses can be provided at local hospitals and sometimes even schools. These classes can equip the babysitter with information to keep both the child, or children, and sitter safe in various health and weather scenarios.
In the United States, the circumstances that babysitters face can change quickly. The American Red Cross is currently the most popular form of certification; its curriculum ranges from sleeping to emergencies to encouraging young entrepreneurship. It has been statistically shown that parents are more relaxed with a certified baby-sitter.[1]
The term "baby sitter" first appeared in 1937, while the verb form "baby-sit" was first recorded in 1947.[2] The American Heritage College Dictionary notes "One normally would expect the agent noun babysitter with its -er suffix to come from the verb baby-sit, as diver comes from dive, but in fact babysitter is first recorded in 1937, ten years earlier than the first appearance of baby-sit. Thus the verb was derived from the agent noun rather than the other way around, and represents a good example of back-formation."[3] The use of the word "sit" to abbreviate to refer to a baby-sitter is recorded from 1800. The term may have originated from the action of the caretaker "sitting on" the baby in one room, while the parents were entertaining or busy in another.
In British English the term refers only to caring for a child for a few hours, on an informal basis and usually in the evening when the child is asleep for most of the time. In American English the term can include caring for a child for the whole or most of the day, and on a regular or more formal basis, which would be described as childminding in British English.
In the United States, the term is sometimes used when one parent is at home and the other, who would normally be present, is not.
In India a babysitter or nanny is known as an ayah or aya, a person hired on a longer term contract basis to look after a child regardless of the presence of the parents.