When Lisa Hoang of Kailua had her first son seven years ago, she found baby sitters the old-fashioned way, asking friends and co-workers for recommendations.
Eventually she hired a co-worker’s 15-year-old daughter, and it worked out wonderfully until the teen went off to college. Luckily, the girl’s younger sister was able to baby-sit, but she, too, went off to college.
Hoang, who owns Windward Skies Photography, specializing in newborn and family portraits, has flexible hours but needs baby-sitting help when she’s on a shoot, paying anywhere from $10 to $20 an hour.
For her most recent baby sitter, Hoang, now a mother of three boys (Oliver, 2, Carter, 4, and Tyler, 7), went online.
These days there are more than a dozen online referral services for baby sitters, but Hoang went on craigslist.org, a free, online community bulletin board. She found Eybelle Nevins, then 17, who turned out to be a good match.
Hoang is open to using teenage sitters as long as they’re responsible.
"My biggest concern with a younger sitter is if they might be texting or talking on a cellphone instead of paying attention to the kids," she said. "If you’re not paying attention, it only takes a minute for a toddler to run into the street."
Finding quality, affordable child care continues to be a challenge for parents in Hawaii, which was ranked No. 3 last year in a CNN report on a list of the top five most expensive states for child care.
While many parents still rely on neighborhood teens or an extended network of family to watch their kids, it isn’t uncommon these days for them to turn to online referral services or pay a premium for a professional nanny.
Finding good baby sitters is always a challenge for Jennifer Pang, a busy mother of two boys, ages 2 and 4. She runs Pang Communications, which sometimes means she has to attend evening events while her husband is traveling for business.
She prefers baby sitters who are older than teenagers, unless she knows them personally. While it’s nice to find a good baby sitter through word of mouth, Pang says online referral services have widened her scope.
She’s used Nannies Hawaii, keikisitters.com and care.com to find help.
"Word of mouth may be limited to your friends or community, but a good baby sitter might be one or two neighborhoods over," she said.
Katy Chen, executive director of PATCH (People Attentive to Children), a nonprofit child care resource and referral agency, warns parents to be careful when going online.
"We always caution parents to be extra careful when finding child care online," she said. "You need to make sure that the child care provider has in fact been screened. On many of these sites, you can go on and register yourself and no one has done any type of background check."
Also, Chen said parents should be aware of state laws. A caregiver who is regularly watching three or more unrelated children at home must be licensed by the state.
PATCH, which offers referrals mostly to state-licensed child care homes and centers rather than the occasional baby sitter, started a free online database of licensed providers in 2006. Since then the market has exploded, and in July, Patch launched an enhanced referral service — a list of pre-screened providers — for a flat fee of $50.
Kathy Custer, owner of Keiki Sitters & Ohana Helpers, realized there was an unmet need when she posted an ad on Craigslist offering baby-sitting services in 2007 and got an immediate response from nine families.
She launched keikisitters.com that same year to help families find baby sitters recruited mostly from local universities and colleges. Today she has a database of more than 380 sitters.
They must be at least 18 years old, with references, and have all undergone a background check, according to Custer. Most are majoring in early education or nursing and are able to work around class schedules.
Custer’s service competes with at least 25 national websites that also offer online baby-sitting referrals in Honolulu. Some charge an extra fee for background checks.
Baby-sitting rates here typically range from about $8 to $10 an hour for one child, $12 to $15 for two children and $15 to $18 for three children, she said.
Sittercity.com lists about 760 baby sitters in the Honolulu area who charge an average of $10.25 to $11 an hour.
Nannies Hawaii offers both temporary and permanent placements, and does all the screening for parents. Kamaaina rates range from $12 to $15 an hour, plus a booking fee, said owner Kim DeJesus.
All nannies must be at least 18 years old, have CPR and first-aid training, plus a minimum of two years of experience and references. Most are either college students or teachers, she said.
There is still room in the child care market for teenage sitters. The American Red Cross offers a training course for baby sitters every three months for kids 11 to 17 years old and sometimes adults.
On a recent Sunday a dozen enthusiastic kids — all girls and one boy — ages 12 to 14 learned how to properly pick up, bottle-feed, burp and diaper "Baby Annie," an infant mannequin.
Instructor Jennifer Mills started the class by pretending to be a parent interviewing the potential baby sitters. The seven-hour course covers everything from when to call 911 and how to perform CPR and first aid, to how to plan playtime and nap time.
Mills, who started baby-sitting at the age of 9, said maturity is more important than age in determining a teenager’s fitness for baby-sitting.
Many of the teens in the class, like Callie Gribbins, 14, of Kailua, already have some baby-sitting experience. Gribbins watches her 5-year-old brother and his friends but wanted to take the class to acquire more skills.
"I like little kids," she said. "I just wanted to get out this summer and do something."
Red Cross certification, experience, references and college degrees are a plus, but Hoang, the Kailua mother, said that for her it came down to meeting the person and seeing how they interacted with her kids. She was looking for someone calm and clear-headed, and Nevins, the teen she found on Craigslist, fit the bill.
"I was surprised how focused (Eybelle) was with the kids and how she was interacting and playing with them," she said.
Nevins, 19, grew up in a large family and has been baby-sitting since she was 14. Since posting her ad on Craigslist, she baby-sits four to five different families on an on-call basis.
Many other parents — if they have the choice — prefer to stay within the ohana for all their baby-sitting needs rather than hire teens or go through online referral sites.
For Rebecca Chong, the working mother of Auli‘i, 5, and Kapena, almost 2, her family has been a tremendous help on days she needs baby-sitting outside of regular day care hours.
She isn’t comfortable with the idea of a teenager watching her kids, particularly with Kapena, who has food allergies.
Her mother, whom the kids call "Babcia" (bop-CHAH), which is Polish for "Grandmother," is her first choice as a baby sitter, then her sister, a cousin and a close family friend.
"You don’t have to worry about them crying when you walk out the door," she said.
Denise Luke, owner of 12th Avenue Grill and Salt Kitchen & Tasting Bar in Kaimuki, feels the same way. She and chef Kevin Hanney need someone to watch son Collin, 3, when they’re at the restaurants.
"Tutu is still our go-to, then my sister," said Luke.
If both are unavailable, the couple pretty much give up on going to late-night events together.
Rather than hire a teenager, they met and interviewed a highly qualified sitter with a degree in speech pathology and excellent references through a friend — but even then they haven’t called her yet.
Luke says it would be an additional expense, plus she has "mommy guilt" over paying a baby sitter for more time away from her son when he’s already in preschool five days a week.
