What to tell a babysitter about your child

Three things, not thirty

Every parent I know does the same thing at the door. We talk fast. We say all of it at once — the food thing, the noise thing, the thing about the tag in the back of the shirt. The sitter nods along. Then we leave, and four minutes later they are holding maybe two of it.

That is not a sitter problem. Nobody keeps thirty new facts about a child they met once, while also making dinner. So we pick three: the three that change how the evening goes. Not the three that are hardest to explain — the three a sitter would get wrong if nobody told them.

How to pick your three big ones

Think about the times things went sideways with someone new. That list is usually your answer:

• A sound nobody warned him about — the blender, the vacuum, the beep of the smoke alarm test.
• A question asked while she is already upset, which makes it bigger instead of smaller.
• Two directions at once, when one at a time would have worked fine.

Now write each one as a move, not a fact. “He is sensitive to noise” tells a sitter nothing useful at seven in the evening. “Count down from five before the blender” tells them exactly what to do with their hands.

That is the shape of a good line: the need, then the move that meets it. If you can say it in one breath, it will survive the walk from your kitchen to their memory.

Write two lists: do and avoid

Most of us write the do list without being asked, then skip the avoid list because it feels rude. Like we are telling a grown adult they are going to mess this up.

Write it anyway. The avoid list is where the real information lives, and it is almost never about carelessness:

• Taking the blanket away so it does not get dirty.
• Explaining, gently and at length, while she is still in the middle of it.
• Offering one more bite of the food he already said no to.

Every one of those is a person being kind in a way that does not land for your child. Nobody can guess it from outside. You are not warning a sitter about themselves — you are handing them a shortcut.

Name the comfort item and where it lives

A blanket, a bear, a stretched-out sweatshirt, a rock from the driveway. Name it, say where it lives, and say it goes in the car and to the table so nobody decides it stays home.

Then say what happens if it goes missing, because the sitter needs to know whether that is a small problem or the whole evening. And say whether it can go in the wash tonight. Usually it cannot.

Give them a signal word

Pick a word your child can say when the words are running out. Ours means: I am done, I need to leave this room, do not follow me with questions.

It works because it is one word. A kid who has lost the long sentences can often still get one word out, in the exact moment explaining is hardest.

Tell the sitter two things: the word, and what happens the second they hear it. The second half matters more. A word nobody answers stops being a word within about a day.

Bedtime, written in order

Bedtime is where a fine evening comes apart at 8:40. Not because the sitter missed something — because bedtime at your house is a sequence, and the same steps in a new order are a different thing entirely to a kid who is already tired.

So write the steps in order, short. Bath, pajamas, teeth, two books, hall light on, door open a hand's width. Put in the details that feel too small to say out loud — those are the ones nobody guesses: which light, which side of the bed, how far open the door goes.

And add the repair, because sitters do not know they are allowed to use it: if a step gets skipped, go back and do it.

What you can leave out

You do not owe a sitter your child's history. Not the hard years, not the paperwork, not the words other people have used for him. A sitter needs tonight.

Leave medicine out of writing, too. Anything about medicine goes straight from you to the person, out loud, each time — never in a note that can be scrolled past, or forwarded to someone who was not in the conversation.

And leave out the apology. A lot of us open with sorry, he's a lot. Your kid is not a warning label. The countdown works and the blender does not, and that is the whole doorway speech.

Ask for a few lines back

One more ask, and it pays for itself: ask the sitter to send you a few lines when the night is over. Kids often cannot tell us how it went, and the person who was there can.

Two sentences is plenty. What they did, anything that got hard, what helped. That is how the second visit goes better than the first — and how your three big ones stay true to the kid you have this month.