Added: 12/08/2005 |
General Child Safety - a Major Concern of all ParentsUnless you are a hundred per cent positive that you child is definitely mature enough to stay home alone, it would be a good idea to solicit the help of child sitters in order to make sure about general child safety in your absence. The best way to define whether your child requires the supervision of child sitters on not would be to analyze you child's ability to make independent adequate decisions concerning general child safety and whether you child can act reasonably in case of emergency.
Normally the age at which it should be safe to leave an ordinary child at home alone would be 12 years old as they are already mature enough to observe the general child safety rules. But that is only if the kids is perfectly familiar with the house rules that are to be followed and has good understanding with the most basic safety guidelines. Besides, in order to safely stay home alone the child needs to have a mental algorithm of action in case of emergency, not only be familiar with the fire safety and lead safety requirements, but able to deal with emergency.
In case if the qualities mentioned above can not be fully attributed to your child, it is necessary to seek the services of child sitters. Choosing sitter is not as easy as it may seem. A caring parent will take numerous factors into consideration and sitter costs will not be the primary one. First of all there are certain personality attributes that child sitters are invariably required to have.
To be a good child sitter the person should possess a great deal of common sense and reasonable judgment abilities in order to assure general child safety of your precious kid. Besides, it is crucial for child sitter to be a reliable and responsible person, because if child sitters neglect their duties and responsibilities, your child may just as well behave as if left home alone. Child sitters need to realize that what they need to provide is constant supervision and guidance, which is the best guarantee of general child safety.
Besides, it would be a very welcome complement to a child sitter's practice to exercise some kind of educative activity, is that the parents of the child who is being taken care of can not only revel at the thought that their kid is safe and sound, but that he can also benefit in the educational respect.
But certainly for parents the child's safety is the primary concern. In order to assure that the child is best taken care of, it is necessary to equip child sitters with the most relevant knowledge possible about the child's personality, habits, regular patterns of behavior, etc. It is of utmost importance to inform child sitters of the medical disorders, if any, namely chronological diseases or regular seizures. Parents should be willing to share their own experience with their child sitters. It can be of great help for a child sitter to obtain some advice about how to entertain the child or how to quell him.
There are certain rules that need to be obeyed by all child sitters with no reservation. The first rule is not to use hitting or shaking the child for the disciplinary purpose. This is a very dangerous way of preserving the discipline and it is not very efficient. It may cause the exact opposite effect and only trigger even greater outrage.
Besides, such aggressive techniques that child sitters can use may injure the child or traumatize him in the emotional way, which is not exactly what the parents are paying child sitters for.
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