The Girl Scouts are continuing a nearly decade-old tradition of training Signal Mountain babysitters through an instructional camp at Bachman Community Center.
Lynn Talbott, former camp director for the past 10 years and current camp co-director, said the course is beneficial for everyone from “mother’s little helpers” to girls with paying jobs already lined up in the coming weeks.
“I think it gives the girls an opportunity to make money and gives them the confidence they need to know what to do in case of an emergency,” she said.
Scouts learn valuable childcare skills such as the proper method of securing a child in a swing, how to swaddle an infant and what children should and should not eat or do, said Talbott.
The local Girl Scout council provides each girl with a baby simulator they are responsible for throughout the camp as part of the Baby Think it Over program. The “baby” contains a computer which rates the Scout on her parenting skills at the end of camp based on the average length of time it takes her to get the baby to stop crying – which can take up to 20 minutes and occurs at all hours of the night – as well as how the baby is handled.
The course fulfills the requirements of the Cadette Girl Scout Child Care badge and involves six hours of training with registered nurse Linda Sparks, an American Red Cross volunteer who has been teaching the course at Bachman for the past three years.
“People I asked [if I could babysit for] said I needed to be a little older so I would know what to do if something happened,” said 12-year-old Julia Agan. “Probably now they would take me.”
The girls also visited Edu Care Day Care to learn about careers in child care, and talked with working mothers about the struggles involved with juggling responsibilities. Service projects included a children’s book drive for the Bachman library and the creation of “dinosaur eggs” for the sandbox at Edu Care.
Raven Hall, 12, is taking the course for the second time in anticipation of the birth of her sister’s child, which she said is due in a few weeks.
“I thought it would be good to have a little bit more experience before he actually comes,” she said. “It helps to learn things like how to do the diapers, because I knew I’d be babysitting a lot.”
Despite the valuable lessons taught, the babysitting course’s duration has been shortened to two-and-a-half days from the three-and-a-half-day program of previous years, and the one-day camp for younger Scouts was eliminated this year, according to camp co-director Marcia Stevens.
“It’s all middle-schoolers this year, because we didn’t get enough volunteers to run the camp for younger girls,” she said of this year’s summer program for Girl Scouts at Bachman, with the number of volunteers dropping to 10 from the 30-40 who participated last year. “We wanted to continue [the babysitting camp] because the younger girls have been wanting to take the course.”
Talbott said increased difficulty in obtaining grants from local organizations combined with decreased funding from the Girl Scouts are the cause for the threat to the camp’s existence.
The course at Bachman maintains its typical enrollment of 20 Girl Scouts, indicating the shortage of funding and volunteers does not correspond with interest in the program, which boasts an added benefit to the community as a whole in providing busy local moms with an increased pool of well-trained sitters.