Hey there,
My family is a family of five. We have a five-year-old, a two-year-old, and an infant. We go sleep and share one bed so our requirements are not much. Is it just me or does this website seem extremely hostile towards families with small children? Just finding it really difficult to get a proper sit for our family and most the time I feel like we’re denied because of our kids even if the listing says accepting families. Anyone have any advice on how to go about this? Or is this just not the place for us?
Anyone else a family with small children who have done this successfully? We’ve gotten a couple of houses so we even have some reviews but just not able to find any sort of consistent sitting arrangements.
@TheBrandons0819 What do you mean by “consistent sitting arrangements.” Are you looking to sit full time ? Or is this for occasional holidays ?
The best time for a family to find a sit is during the school holiday period when families go away . The reason for this is that family homes are already set up for children , also there is usually an excess of sits available ( more sits than sitters to do them ) over school holiday periods .
When you say share a bed , do you mean all 5 of you in one bed ?
Some owners will have good reason to not want to have very young children around their pets . Either because their pets may be known to react aggressively or be scared by young children or they may be unsure about how young children will interact with their pets .
Does your profile and application address this ? Addressing these valid concerns by assuring owners that your young children will not be left unsupervised around their pets and that your older child has been taught how treat pets . If you haven’t already, perhaps add some photos of your children interacting with pets . This might be reassuring to perspective hosts .
At the end of the day a host can only choose one sitter and in popular destinations will get a lot of quality applications. So 4 out of 5 applications will be declined .
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Welcome @TheBrandons0819
Have you done any THS sits? Are you applying for popular locations?
I believe there’s a couple of active forum members that sit as families so they may chip in.
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I wouldn’t say the site is ‘extremely hostile’ towards families. THS is simply a matching site and nothing more at its core. Everyone is free to choose which sits they apply to, and which sitters they want in their home, and I don’t think they actively do anything to make it harder for any particular type of sitter to succeed.
I have seen people post on here that do have younger children so it certainly is possible. But it can’t be denied that it will probably be more challenging, so you will have to be willing to apply for more sits and accept higher rates of rejection. People traveling with their own animals for example, face similar challenges.
Hosting children that young comes with a number of concerns. Some people already know their pets don’t like young children, and for those that may not be sure how they will respond, are not willing to take the risk . Younger children are more likely to do damage. A host who lives in an apartment for example, may worry about their neighbors being disturbed by a crying infant or children running around and playing.
Many homes are not really child-friendly and could have unsafe elements, understandably leaving many hosts concerned about liability of various kinds.
I know it is frustrating because the ‘family-friendly’ tag is very broad, and many people open to having children in their home may have preferences for the ages and/or the number of them. So you really don’t have any way of knowing these preferences unless they specifically mention it in their listing.
Applying to sits that are nearby and/or last minute may help. While it isn’t customary to meet in person before accepting a sit, offering to do this for more local ones could work in your favor. If they got to meet you and your family prior, they may feel better about letting you stay in your home. People who are looking for last-minute coverage may also be a bit more willing to take a chance on you. And that will give you a chance to build up some reviews.
Best of luck!
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If you mean that you have a couple of sits, I would presume that any sitter (incl. myself) will often not be preferred if we are competing against sitters with very many reviews. I think it is only natural that a host will consider many 5*-reviews less risky than a few.
This will in particular be true for very popular destinations, as the competition is hard for them, with or without kids. If you apply for Low application sits you will probably be more likely to succeed.
I do think it is a valid point that
- hosts without small children will be afraid that the pet doesn’t go well with small children. My dog doesn’t like small kids, she’s not used to them. Or; afraid that the kids can’t handle the pet. Or; that the kids will be a handful to the parents so you don’t focus on the pets and/ or keep the home clean.
You can adress how you handle this in your profile, and/ or choose to apply to families with small children in the household. Their homes will in addition be better suited to your needs as they might be able to provide kids beds, toys etc.
It will be easier to get sits in some destinations and in some periods of the year. Summer holiday is for instance high season, and there are more sits in UK than in Belgium.
Play at your strengths and you are more likely to succeed. Strengths is for example that you are used to tidy up, you will probably stay more home with the pet etc.
We did home exchanges each summer when the kids grew up, and for us swapping with families in same situation was really great. I think that is probably true also for petsitting.
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Good points above.
My dog has little to no experience being around children. Because of that I’d not be comfortable leaving on vacation and him having to deal with the upheaval of my being gone combined with three little people introduced into his life. That’s a stressor I’m not willing to put him through and I don’t feel that’s being hostile to families.
Our house is most definitely not set up for kids under the age of 16.
I know when I’m looking for sits it seems many of the homeowners are retirees, so they may not have a home set up for children.
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Search for previous threads that mention families and you’ll find a bunch of experienced sitters with families. They know how to apply in ways that make them attractive to hosts.
Because of such folks, I have a hard time imagining that anyone is hostile to you or families. If you mean they’re hostile because they don’t choose you and your family to sit, that’s a mischaracterization.
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Wow! This site isn’t ‘hostile’ and no you aren’t being ‘denied’. I’m going to be totally honest, but it really sounds like you aren’t putting yourself in the shoes of the home owner. That’s probably what is preventing you from getting sits, so it could be the wording in your profile, because that could be where you are going wrong.
Your post here doesn’t seem to have taken into account why there are less family orientated sits, because you seem to think you will have a higher chance on a different site, and that isn’t necessarily the case.
Of course there is less chance for a family with small children to get sits, but’s its not because the site is hostile, it’s because small kids want to smother and hug dogs and cats really tightly, kids move suddenly and their pets won’t be used to such sudden movements, and they make loud screaming/crying noises, and these pets are the owners ‘kids’, so they are trying to keep them calm and relaxed. So it’s not a case of ‘this’ site, it’s the case of WITH ANY SITE there will be less opportunities. But there are still plenty of sits that are happy to accept families, just less of them, that’s all. So put yourself in the eyes of the home owner, and understand why families are a higher risk for them, and then take a glance at your profile with a fresh set of eyes to ensure you haven’t sounded like you don’t know anything about their pets needs to be calm and relaxed.
Also I know you are showing that you are flexible and easy going by saying you’ll be happy to sleep in one bed… but that’s sounding desperate, and ‘desperate’ is a total turn off, the same as with those that are negative (but I don’t think you’re negative at all… you’re just not putting yourself in the owners shoes). Also, if they have a smaller place, they’ll not want it overcrowded as there is a higher potential for things to be damaged especially with kids (of any age).
You mention you have got a couple of reviews, so that’s amazing, but if you are choosing major tourist places then a couple of reviews is unlikely to get you a sit (with kids or without), over someone who has dozens of reviews. So do more sits that are local to you first, say within an hour to two travelling time away, to build up more reviews. That’s what increases your chances to get the places you really want to visit.
Also, if you apply for more remote sits, you increase your chances hugely because there are less people apply to those ones.
I hope that helps.
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Wondering what you mean by this. Sounds like you’re looking for something recurring? If so, that’s generally not how it’s going to work. Some people sit full time but it’s a decent amount of coordination and effort to make that work and that’s for folks who don’t have the limitations that go along with having young children.
The site isn’t hostile to families, but most people using it aren’t going to want unfamiliar children in their homes and around their pets. Either the homes aren’t set up for it or the pets aren’t used to it. But that isn’t being hostile, it’s being realistic. When I start listing my property as a HO, I likely won’t allow children as the space just won’t be conducive to it. Doesn’t make me hostile…
And the all sleeping in one bed thing is, IMO, not a selling point. So that isn’t something I would stress. But I would mention if you can provide a travel cot for the small ones as many home owners would likely not have one you could use.
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We would like to do this on a more full-time basis, but with such inconsistency on availability of house sits, we haven’t really ever been able to do this successfully. And you do make great points and most of the time the pet parents will explain these things. I completely understand if they’re uncertain about how their pets will react to children. But we’re even getting denied for houses with king size beds and a cat lol. We do all share the same bed because we have small children still so extra space isn’t really an issue as long as it’s a queen or larger.
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We’ve done a couple of houses already so it’s not our first rodeo. We would love to get a house sit in London, but I understand that that’s a pretty premium destination. We’ve done a housesit in Boston, and our hometown of Cincinnati.
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And I certainly would never want to imply that the website is hostile. Just coming out of a place of a little bit of frustration. The two sits that we did have had glowing reviews by both of the pet parents so I figured it would be a little bit easier to at least get to the next step of the application process, but it’s just as difficult as it has been in the past.
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I certainly understand the concern about pets. But children don’t really need much. We would bring everything they would need or want or am I misunderstanding what you mean by set up for children?
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No one in particular is hostile, I mentioned that because of the extreme difficulty it is to get house sits with families even with those house sits that have family friendly tags marked on them. It just feels like we have to go through a bunch of extra hoops that other people just don’t have to do simply because we have little ones that are very well behaved. That’s why there is the family friendly tag on the website but the other problem is that once you put The family, friendly tag in the website. It reduces the options you have for house sits by like 90%.
For example, I was doing the search for London the other day, I put in all of our other filters before the family tag and there was over 2000 available. After I put the family friendly tag the options go down to like 38.
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I am guessing @PNW was talking about granite kitchen worktops with sharp corners, bannisters on staircases with kid sized gaps, rock solid flagstone kitchen flooring that kids could slip on and harm themselves, the list is endless.
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I must say that, amongst the sits I’ve done, two of the owners had families with young children - one a family of 5 & the other a toddler. They both said never again as they left the homes unclean & several things were damaged. I think you’d have more luck when the children are older, such as @Debbie who has two boys & many 5 star reviews.
With such young children do you really want to look after animals, which is the priority, or are you looking for a free holiday? As someone else says, with children so young you are more likely to focus on them than the home & pets.
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That seems reasonable of most hosts. They not only have to look out for their pets, they have to consider that their homes probably aren’t childproofed. And family friendly probably works better with older kids. Your kids are young and at those ages they can get into more trouble in a house than say a 10-year-old or a teenager.
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There are less than 400 listings in the greater London area at the moment and that’s with no filters in place, @ 40 actually in the city and not WAYYYYY out in the middle of nowhere. There are about 2100 for all of the UK. London is a highly competitive area, even for experienced sitters with many reviews and no added challenges. IMO you’re going to need to be more realistic about your location choices to build up reviews. In addition to the kids, it sounds also like you’re from the US, which could make people nervous, especially with the kids as they’re more prone to illnesses which could cause you to cancel.
Also, children can hurt cats too so I’m not sure why you think that a home owner with a cat should be more open to children than one with a dog…
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We sit full-time as a couple . Although we get a lot of sits from THS we don’t rely on THS for all of our sits . We have private sits that came through recommendations from friends and family . These built up over several years before we went full time .
I think (and your experience has shown ) that full-time sitting with very young children with just sits from the THS platform will not be achievable. Even solo sitters can struggle to get back to back sits and have to fill gaps with alternative arrangements.
Realistically, sitting through the school holidays you will likely be accepted for some sits. If you focus on sits that are family homes their pets are used to children and their homes set up for children too . ( No expensive ornaments and pieces of art at toddler level , safety gates and toys already in place etc)
For example , if you want to plan a visit to the U.K. again focus on cities other than London like Brighton, Bristol , Oxford, Bath, Canterbury , Edinburgh etc . It will take some coordination and a lot of applications but with that approach you could likely achieve 6 -8 weeks sitting in the summer holidays ( schools holidays start earlier in Scotland than England ) or a couple of weeks over Christmas and Easter .
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We have just completed a lovely sit in a luxury open plan home . It was tastefully decorated , full of expensive pieces of art , glass sculptures, glass side tables, glass coffee tables , wine racks full of expensive wine at floor ( toddler ) level, delicate ornaments and vases on the sides ( all within easy reach of a young child )
I was quite nervous about me or my husband accidentally breaking something .The cleaner said she got nervous about cleaning it too . A sit like that is not suitable for young children for very good reasons .
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