Today I was approached by the father of my son’s friend.  I will call him D.

D asked me if I’d be interested in keeping his son for about 7-9 days in September.  He is selling a house in Florida, and his wife will be out of town as well doing something else.

He doesn’t want to pull his son out of school for a week.  (The second week of school.)

This is the same kid I wrote about before and you really have to understand our history to help me with my question.

http://lifehappens.joeuser.com/index.asp?aid=91653

http://lifehappens.joeuser.com/index.asp?aid=92317

So D told me to come up with a number (meaning how much I will charge to keep his child for a week).

The day I pick the child up, my husband will be returning from a three week business trip in Asia.  So the timing isn’t great but that’s ok I can swing it.

My question concerns payment.  How much do I charge?

The kid will be in school for 7 hours a day, 5 of those days.  The other two are on the weekend.  I will be feeding him, and teaching him all about personal hygiene.  Heh.  And probably making his life miserable, but I won’t charge for that, it’s on the house.  Hehe.

I joke because he gets unlimited internet and video game playing at home and my son isn’t allowed to do either during a school week.  And on the weekends he has to earn an hour of video/internet play by being physically active an hour.  Anyway, I am sure it will cause some issues at first, but will even out as the week progresses.

I don’t pay babysitters, as we don’t have any.  And I don’t usually charge a friend when watching her kids.  I have no idea what to charge and in all honesty I think D expected me to say, “Oh don’t worry about it.  I’ll do it for free.”

Not.

I asked my gal pal from high school, she puts her kids in daycare.  She did the figuring and said I should charge $400.  That seems like a lot to me.

So how much would you pay someone to keep your 10 year old son for 7-9 days during the school year while you were out of state?