When you're a teenage girl, you need money for a lot of things. Lunch at school, cute clothes, iTunes downloads. Now, we're all too old for "allowances" or our parents' money; we need our own—and for most of us there is only one source of income: baby-sitting.

Depending on who you're baby-sitting for, the experience is different. But there is almost always one thing in common with every baby-sitting job: play with the kids, get them in bed, and then enjoy the fact that you're getting paid 10 bucks an hour to watch TV. Before this luxury, however, enduring the chaos is what it’s all about.

Being in someone else's house watching someone else's kids gives someone a big glimpse into the everyday life of a family. Depending on how the kids react to situations such as an early bedtime or, "No, I told you that you can have one cookie, hun," really shows what the parents are like, and how they run their home.

Now, of course, I don't plan on kids for a long time. It is pretty cool, though, to practice parenting for a little while; to try out little things that your mom used to do to you. I think the thing that makes it so entertaining is watching your parental instincts come into play—and seeing how they play out versus the instilled techniques that a child already knows.

My mom says that baby-sitting is the best form of birth control. Sometimes, the baby won't stop crying, or a kid is throwing a fit over one more scoop of ice cream. We often moan about it, saying that we are never going to subject ourselves to this. But almost just as often, it’s satisfying to watch a child finally share a toy with his brother. The best part is when they surprise you by hugging it out or saying sorry without you even asking. There are little moments sewn between the times of pulling-your-hair-out insanity that make me come back to the house again and again and again.

We've all called our moms at one point or another asking how to calm a seemingly everlasting crier or begging for the tricks on bandaging a boo-boo. It's funny to find that once the problem is solved and I'm feeding the baby a bottle in his rocking chair, I have that "ahhhh" moment that I've seen on my own mom's face so many times.

So thank you, Western Springs moms. Thanks for (without even being home) helping raise the next generation of mothers through your kids. And next time you come home from the big night out, and hand your sitter the check, take note of the little smile perched on her face. Half of the happiness is, of course, the paid-for-laziness concept, but the other half is the experience gained, the lessons learned, the battle won, and the diaper changed.