Online Babysitting Course #Review #CherokeeChildcare

     The Big One has been wanting for a while now to earn money babysitting.  She's 11 and she's been allowed to watch the baby for up to 10 or 15 minutes by herself while I run down to the bus or get the mail.  I know that she's responsible and dependable, but she has no proper training.  Of course she is probably too young to earn money through anyone unless she is babysitting young kids while the parents try to get things done in the home at the time.  But even so, she won;t even earn money doing that without structured lessons first.

      So for Christmas, she's going to be receiving an online babysitting course on Udemy.com.  The course goes through resume building, price setting, nutrition, activities, discipline, first aid, and more.  It uses a variety of video lectures and downloadable text.

     The first lesson is about building a resume and learning how to set a base charge and when you should raise or lower your price.  For instance, whether you are required to provide food, drive longer distances than usual, or the age of the children.  Some of the things that could be helpful on a resume are definitely things that The Big One will be involved in soon, such as first aid certification and formal training in babysitting.

     Next is a downloadable first aid guide, it shows what to do in case of choking, lacerations, first aid, etc.  After that, it takes you through creating positive relationships with children as well as the use of reverse psychology and when to use it.  To be honest, a lot of these reverse psychology ideas seemed hurtful to me and I would never use them.  Things such as "You probably can't do it anyway, I bet you can't." might motivate some, but it would make me feel bad about myself if someone said it to me... things like that.  SO be sure if you use reverse psychology that you know the person can take it well.

     Next you go through fun activities for keeping kids busy and the dos and don'ts of discipline.  A few of these ideas I found also to be ones I wouldn't consider, like the Drill Sargent act.  Mostly I think I wouldn't because I don't think I'd be thrilled to walk in and see someone using that routine with my children.  But obviously different parents will accept different things.  I wouldn't want someone letting my kids walk all over them either.  It's a give and take, I guess.  As you can see from the image above, this part of the course had some visual technical difficulties.

     The next sections talk about nutrition and multiple children.  It tells which foods will be healthiest and give longer lasting energy and hunger control as well as tips on feeding multiple kids. There's also suggestions for fun group activities with instructions on how to do them.

     The last part gives some extra information, such as tips and tricks of the trade.  Here are my general thoughts on the course:

• The information is good, there's lots of valuable information in it.
• Some of the information I did find either irrelevant to the course (like the part about folic acid during pregnancy) or things I wouldn't use (the parts in the reverse psychology bit).
• The downloadable texts are nice.
• Some of the text had issues just like some of the video.  Things like the game instructions being hard to separate, they run together.
• The video is also nice, it's great that you get breaks form the reading and that the reading provides breaks from the videos.
• Some of it was a touch hard to listen to as the words were stumbled on a bit.

     Overall, I think the course isn't a bad one.  It's only about $40, which isn't much when you consider that it looks great on a resume.  The Big One will be really happy to have this under her belt and I'm glad she will have it as well.  Did you ever babysit when you were a kid?

     To learn more, checkout the online babysitting course on Udemy.

Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.