FreeDuck wrote:Around here there's a big Parent's Night Out movement. The YMCA does them, as do local preschools and some nannies. The Y is cheap -- $28 for 4 hours and two kids. The nannies are expensive, but sit for longer, and it's usually hosted at one of the parents' houses in the PNO network. They run about 55$ for 6 hours.
When we have hired sitters before, we paid $20-25 for about 3 hours, and that was in PA.
I mentioned the parent's night out exchange that we did for years on Boomer's sippy cup thread. When we moved here my girls were 3 and 5 and the neighbor's boys were 1.5 and 4. There are very few teenagers in the area and the few that live here tend to not want to babysit.
We established a parent's night out whereby we each picked one Friday or Saturday night per month and one couple went out while the other couple watched all the kids. The couple watching the kids did so at their own house. It included dinner, playtime, and then bedtime in one's own home. For instance, on my night to watch the kids, the neighbor kids would arrive around 5:00. The kids would play until dinner, then we'd eat, play until just before bedtime, and then I would bring the neighbor kids to their house while Mr B covered the nighttime rituals here. I'd put the other kids to bed, following their normal rituals, and stay there until the parents got home from their evening out.
The timing allowed the parent's who were going out to have an hour or two before dinner to enjoy some quite time before their date (we'd usually make a 7:00 dinner reservation) and then not have to rush home after dinner. The evening usually ended by midnight and everyone got to sleep in their own beds and no one paid for a sitter. We did this monthly exchange for about 7 years until the kids were old enough to stay home by themselves.
The kids looked forward to their night's out as much as the parents did. They had special games they played and created elaborate performances for the host adults. It was a lot of fun for everyone.
