Caring for Kids Comes of Age : Ranks of O.C. Children Turn Baby-Sitting Into Certified Business

Time was if you needed a baby-sitter and couldn’t grab Grandma, you’d rustle some quarters out of your apron, set out a bag of potato chips and call over the fence to the kid next door.

But in today’s vast, seething and rootless society, where both parents spend more waking time at work than at home, where families are extended across the country and you don’t know anyone more than two doors away, traditional sitters are tough to find.

Even if you do find one, you’ll spend the evening worrying about child molesters and drug addicts, drive-by shootings, swimming pool drownings, and the myriad other nightmares on baby-sitting street.

And it’s not just you who’s worried. Baby-sitters themselves are frightened of parents coming home drunk and wanting to drive them home, scared of tales about sitters being molested and of secret drug stashes.

Enter a new breed of baby-sitter: certificate-wielding legions of children who have turned this once penny-candy pastime into a business. They’ll arrive at your door with first-aid kits, baby-sitting contracts, parent questionnaires, safety checklists and child development charts. They’ll demand references from you, inspect your smoke detector and ask you who the designated driver is for the evening.

These kids--who are as young as 11--have been trained through city recreation programs, private individuals, county and city fire departments, hospitals and the American Red Cross in first-aid, child development, accident prevention, emergency responses, diapering, nutrition and feeding in addition to the business of baby-sitting, including job-hunting techniques.

Thousands of Orange County children have already taken such classes that offer from six to 12 hours of instruction and range in cost from free to $45. Lists of such pros can be obtained from homeowners’ associations, schools, city halls and baby-sitting classes themselves.

The baby-sitting brigadiers get $2.50 an hour and up, with baby-sitters in Newport Beach reporting $5 to $10 per hour, instructors say. The entrepreneurs will often charge extra money for additional children, and even more for hours after midnight.

But despite classes such as the well-established 12-hour Red Cross course that has certified more than 850 Orange County children since 1985 and the proliferation of other baby-sitting programs (one of the newest is Children’s Hospital of Orange County’s Safe Sitters), many parents are still unaware that such baby-sitters exist.

“Finding baby-sitters has always been a problem,” says Marla Miller, a psychiatric nurse, free-lance journalist and Newport Beach mother of three. “Of course, my first choice is always through other parents, but those baby-sitters were always busy. Let’s face it, people hoard good baby-sitters now.”

For years, Miller relied on her sister who lived next door, paying her $5 per hour for peace of mind. But when her sister moved back to Chicago, Miller--then working a hospital night shift--was forced to find other help.

“One week, I had no coverage and was really desperate,” she recalls. “So I hired a 13-year-old from down the street to watch my kids. I thought she’d be OK for just that hour and a half before my husband came home.”

But then her oldest daughter told her that this sitter had violently shaken Miller’s 6-month-old to stop her from crying.

“She could’ve broken her neck,” says Miller. “I fired her on the spot and told her why, but it was clear to me she had no appreciation for how delicate babies are.”

After that incident, Miller moved to a neighborhood with a homeowners association that published a list of certified baby-sitters. Miller started calling them.

“I’ve always been very pleased,” she says. “They’re very conscientious, want to know exact bedtimes and what snacks are allowed. They’d even tell me to call if I was going to be late.”

Unlike traditional baby-sitters, the certified baby-sitters also treated their jobs more like a business, she adds.

“They wouldn’t hem and haw about their rates,” she says. “They’d say, ‘It’s $2.50 for one child, for two I’m $3, for three it’s $3.25.’ But I’d always pay them more so they’d come back.”

And most important, says Miller, they were more knowledgeable about first aid.

That difference was evident to Miller when a certified baby-sitter took quick action the night Miller’s daughter fell and pushed a tooth through her lip.

“She rapidly assessed the situation, applied ice and called her mother to come over,” Miller says. “It wasn’t a major emergency, thank God, but that’s the difference between an untrained and trained baby-sitter.”

Neyleen Marrone, 11, wraps her arms around a choking child and applies the Heimlich maneuver.

“She’s still not talking,” Neyleen says, as the child falls to the ground and flails. Kneeling beside her, Neyleen calls to another child to dial 911, checks to see if the now-quiet victim is breathing and looks in her mouth for possible obstructions.

This is a scene from a first-aid skit at a recent Super Sitters class taught through the City of Huntington Beach, one of seven Orange County cities that contract for the class taught by Amber Poulter.

Neyleen is one of 38 children (four were boys) who attended the six-hour Saturday session and, with coaching from Poulter, acted out various baby-sitting emergency scenarios including poisoning, vomiting, shock, nosebleeds, broken bones and animal bites.

“This is not a substitute for a first-aid class,” Poulter tells the children. “But the most important thing is to prevent accidents before they happen and then you won’t ever have to deal with any of this stuff.”

Poulter, 30, is co-owner of Miracles in Motion, a Mission Viejo-based business that teaches prenatal and postpartum fitness classes. About three years ago, she and partner Charlene Jordan earned instructor’s certificates through the American Red Cross in San Diego, then started to teach Super Sitters classes in Huntington Beach.

“At that time, there weren’t a lot of baby-sitting classes in Orange County,” she says. “Moms were telling me they couldn’t find baby-sitters and that if they did find one, they weren’t good.”

Today, Poulter’s Orange County classes are taught through city recreation departments in Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Mission Viejo, San Juan Capistrano, Yorba Linda, Brea and Newport Beach, plus Lake Elsinore, Temecula, Diamond Bar and Long Beach. Poulter also teaches Girl Scout troops and church groups. More than 1,000 children--the majority of whom are 12 years old--have received baby-sitting certificates through her class.

“It’s the younger ones who are the most excited about kids,” she says. “They’re ready and more open to learn and take it very seriously. A 16-year-old will say, ‘Oh, I’ve baby-sat before and it’s no big deal. Why pay $30 for a class?’ ”

Adds Poulter: “Younger sitters are also more likely to play with children rather than sitting around talking on the phone.”

Poulter’s own situation makes her particularly sympathetic to parents. With five little boys--ranging in age from 1 to 9--she has to work to make ends meet, commuting from her Lake Elsinore home to Orange County. Her husband--a construction worker--leaves home each day at 4:45 a.m. and often has side jobs at night, not returning home until 10 p.m.

“When I was growing up, Dad was home at 3:30 and Mom was always there,” she recalls. “We’d be out on the porch talking and doing things with other families. With my kids, we’re rarely around to socialize at all.”

Poulter says people don’t meet teen-agers anymore because they don’t belong to social groups such as churches. Instead, parents are relying on day-care centers, professional agencies with bonded sitters, hiring live-in nannies or not even going out.

“Traditional baby-sitting is still there,” she says. “But it’s kind of being lost. It’s because of trust: some of my students won’t even put their names on a list. They’re afraid of what could happen to them. They’re afraid of parents coming home drunk and wanting to drive them home. They’re afraid of being approached (sexually) by fathers. Any parent sending their child out to baby-sit has to wonder.”

Poulter teaches children to get references from potential employers and to always call their own parents before leaving the job. If there’s a problem, they use prearranged code words that alert their parent to immediately pick them up.

“The thing is,” says Poulter, “you just never know a person.”

Sitting in her office at the Costa Mesa Fire Department, fire protection analyst Suzanne Freeman tells the story of the baby-sitter who left an 11-month-old girl in a hot bathtub while going out to look for the brother. The baby, burned from hot tap water, lost her legs.

Freeman then segues into another story about a Huntington Beach baby-sitter who last year rescued three children from a burning house.

“I share these stories with my baby-sitting students,” she says. “I ask them, ‘How would you feel if you were this baby-sitter?’ ”

Freeman, a mother of two, designed and started the free, six-hour Costa Mesa Fire Department baby-sitting courses about five years ago. Part of her job then involved analyzing household fire and safety prevention practices.

“I look at my own situation as a parent and there’s so much to worry about,” she says. “And being in my job, you see all kinds of accidents, children who die.”

Freeman says she found that one of the most misrepresented populations was children under the age of 5. Although 7% of the population, they were accounting for 17% of all fire deaths, she says.

“The majority of fire deaths of children under the age of 5 are caused by other children in that same age group who play with matches or lighters,” she warns. “Even an 18-month-old can light a lighter.

“You look at this and you ask what do we do, how can we reach them? I knew I could go to day-care centers and get information to parents, but another way to protect those kids would be through baby-sitters.”

Freeman says most parents don’t even realize that tap water can cause burns, or that microwaved bottles of formula and jelly doughnuts can feel cool on the outside and be scalding inside.

“I get to use all these kids as propaganda tools, as little accident and fire inspectors,” she says with a laugh. “I give them the information and they go out and spread it. All these little mouths are telling parents--you should turn your hot water heater down and your smoke detector batteries are dead. I can’t get into all these homes myself, but they can do it for me.”

The class, also taught to private groups, typically is spread over three days with lots of homework and visits from DARE officers, day-care directors and paramedics, says Freeman. She is considering increasing the course to eight hours.

The recurring theme, stresses Freeman, is that the baby-sitter’s job is to “keep kids alive.”

“The children laugh when I say this but that’s the bottom line. The next thing is to return the child with all the right parts in all the right places. Every baby-sitting encounter that ends up OK is a hero story in my book.”

That’s why the focus is on accident prevention, but the class also includes everything from how to handle overflowing toilets to prowlers and crank callers plus the dollars-and-cents business of baby-sitting.

“The certificate helps them get jobs,” she says. “Having that certificate tells me their heart is in the right place and they’ve made an effort. Their dedication is above and beyond someone who wants to come over and watch TV and eat all night.

“These kids have a lot more common sense than a lot of adults,” she says. “These kids are motivated.”

Rules for Parents

Here are things parents should do to prepare their baby-sitters:

* Before the first job, have the sitter spend half an hour with your children so you can observe the interaction and allow your children to become acquainted with the new person.

* Show your home, pointing out the telephones, smoke detectors, extra blankets, door and window locks, alarm systems, flashlights, heater controls, light switches, first-aid supplies, fire extinguishers, fire exits and any places off-limits or hazardous to children.

* Write precise instructions for needed medication.

* Tell your rules about visitors and personal calls and instruct sitter to record all telephone messages. Instruct sitter to tell callers you can’t come to the phone rather than that you are out of the house.

* Leave telephone number of where you can be reached plus numbers of police, fire, poison control, doctors, neighbors, grandparents and friends. If you’re going to be on the road, leave make of car, license number and routes you are going to be traveling.

* Leave snacks, drinks and prepared food such as big sandwiches and premixed bottles of formula.

* Tell the routines and patterns of your household, including TV rules, allowed activities, snack schedules and bedtime rituals, such as reading stories and whether lights should be left on or off.

* Telephone if you are going to be late, have cash to pay sitter the prearranged rate and provide transportation after dark.