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Some Ideas for When In-Laws do Baby Sitting |
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by wildrose  (November 2006) (rank 25th) |
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I have some ideas/experiences to share for parents who most of the time ask their parent in-laws to baby sit their child/ren while they are having parent's time out. We have done this so many times.
The reasons are to show our appreciation and thankful-ness for our in-laws to
have their times looking after our children. Also to make sure that the children have a proper home cooking meals while we are away (specially with those who have in-laws like to over treat their grandkids).
Here are the things we have done:
- Tidy/clean up the house as much as you could; to show that we do not leave them with mess
- Make a bed for them (if they stay over night); since we only have 3 bedrooms house, we let them sleep in our bed with new clean sheets on, while we would sleep on the sofa bed
- Cook them a home cooking dinner (or buy a ready made meals); even so they do not expect we cook for them, by preparing home cooking it saves time/money to buy a dinner for them and the children, and they feel appreciated with the way we prepared it. If you do not have time to cook, I suppose you could get away by buying a ready cook meals.
- Prepare some healthy snacks and treat for the in-laws and the kids; the snacks and the special treats apart as the desert also It works to keep the children amuse and not think about us so much. Since we do not give them regular treats (ice creams, chips, jelly, marshmallow, etc; of course we do not give all of the type, just pick one of them. If you think fruits are working fine then just go for the fruits)
- Let them choose to watch DVD or even just play game boards; It's everybody free time. So, let them free and enjoy their time as we do.
- Prepare the children's pajamas; at least no one have to fight of what they need to wear.
So far this attempts are working very well. The in-laws are very happy to look after our children, cause we also look after them, Not just use them to baby sit our children. The children are also happy cause they have something special to look forward to. We left the children with all those organized things.
I do not know about how other parents deal with their children, but for us we always told our children a day before about our plan (that we would go out the next night and the grandparent would look after them).
Last word, treat the in-laws to help us to treat ourself! Enjoy your night out!
