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Baby-sitting secrets

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

Tara Holbrook has a good reason for pursuing baby-sitting as her first job.
She loves kids unconditionally.
Okay, maybe on just one condition.
“I just like spending time with kids – well as long as they don’t act up or anything,” she said.
Even when kids get a little rowdy, though, Tara, 13, has the tools to turn sobs into smiles as Bland County’s most qualified young baby sitter.
The rising Bland High School eight-grader decided last month to help fill the county’s need for reliable childcare by completing a Safe Sitter course at Wythe County Community Hospital.
The internationally-used curriculum teaches aspiring baby sitters a variety of skills, from how to start a business and change a diaper to CPR and the Heimlich maneuver.
“It’s a very good course,” said Lessie Blevins, a WCCH licensed practical nurse who has been teaching the class since 1990. “It teaches safety, accident management.”
In early June, Tara and about a dozen other 11-13-year-olds spent their Saturday becoming childcare authorities.
Blevins said other youth from Bland County had taken the course a few years back, but she said Tara, the daughter of Becky and Scott Holbrook, is the first student she’s had from the county in recent years.
“There’s more of a need than you really hear about,” Blevins said. “They usually don’t have any problem getting work.”
Tara has watched her cousin Nathan, 7, off-and-on for the last two years and also regularly baby-sits her younger sister, Laura, 8, and another cousin Avery, a 6-month-old.
Nathan’s mom, Sharon Shewey, said she’s always trusted her niece, but now feels even more comfortable leaving her son with Tara since she has completed the baby-sitting course.
“It makes me a lot more secure knowing that she knows what to do if something was to happen,” Shewey said. “I’m very, very lucky to have her around.”
With the class finished, Tara is looking to expand her business. She said she’s talking to family friends at Central United Methodist Church and plans to be available throughout the upcoming school year.
Becky also said she’ll be happy to have Tara’s skills around come late August when her third child is due.
“She’ll be practiced up for her little brother,” Becky said. “It’ll make me feel better when our new little one gets here.”
While Tara said she likes different things about different ages, she admitted that she has a soft spot for infants.
“Babies are kind of more fun because they listen to you and you can hold them all the time,” she said.
While CPR and anti-choking techniques were the most important skills Tara learned in her course, she said diaper changing was the most memorable lesson.
“They had these baby dolls and they were lifelike and we had to change their diapers and stuff,” she recalled. “It was really funny watching everybody make faces at the dolls and learning how to change them and fold them up in the blankets.”
Along with using strategies from the Safe Sitter class, Tara said she tries to keep kids happy simply by keeping them engaged.
Shewey said she appreciates that Tara is always willing to get Nathan outside and active.
For Tara’s part, she said she’s found that an active kid is a happy kid.
“I just try to find more things for them to do because mostly it’s because they’re bored,” Tara said about why kids get cranky.
In order to stave off boredom, Tara said she always brings a basket filled with goodies like coloring books and chalk on her jobs to make sure she has something to entertain the kids she watches – a tip she picked up from a “Baby-sitters Club” book. 
And when kids do get a little crabby, Tara said she’s not afraid to show them she’s in charge.
“Sometimes you just have to take order and tell them that they need to do this and they need to do that,” she said.
While Tara is filling an important need in the community, she said watching kids doesn’t feel like work.
“I can’t really think of anything I don’t like about baby-sitting,” she said.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 1-800-655-1406 or .