Homeschooling and babysitting

My second daughter wrote about some of the advantages of homeschooling:

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There are lots of awesome benefits of being homeschooled. One of my favorites is having a flexible schedule. The plan one day might be totally different the next. The only consistencies are my college classes, choir, and church. Everything else I rearrange all the time.

Because I’m homeschooled, my calendar is a lot more flexible. As a result, I get a lot of babysitting jobs. On average I have one to three babysitting jobs a week. Most of them are during regular school hours. We have the nitch in the market for morning babysitting.

I also get a lot of weekend jobs from the people I babysit for during the week. My sisters and I get many more weekend jobs then our friends. It is mostly because we have a bigger customer base from babysitting during school hours.

Babysitting jobs during the day doesn’t infringe of my school work. I still get all my classes and homework done; I just do it when it’s convenient. This morning I had a babysitting job; that just means that I’ll do some of the homework I would have done this morning tonight instead.

There are lots of good things about babysitting! Mainly playing with adorable children and getting paid for it. (My parents sometimes joke that the families we babysit for are putting more money into our college funds then they are.) Also, I have lots of child care experience which is bound to be useful someday! It’s certainly useful with our foster care kids!

As I’m getting older my schedule has gotten a little less flexible. For instance, my schedule now includes an ASL class at our local community college. (Yay! I got in!) As my schedule gets busier I have had to decline several babysitting jobs, which my twelve year old sister has joyfully accepted. Luckily our client base for babysitting is pretty big so there are enough jobs for all three of us babysitters.

To sum up, homeschooling is awesome and babysitting will pay for my college.