YOU REALLY, REALLY NEED TO KNOW YOUR NANNY!

Last week I gave you some pointers on hiring your perfect nanny. But there are 2 points I need to expand on: Look into the future and know the people around her. Let me explain.

Our first nanny was the perfect person for infant twins. The typical “grandmotherly” type of woman, although she really wasn’t all that old. She just had that personality of calm and warmth and love. We couldn’t have been happier with her. But as the boys grew more mobile, we found out that she was having a bit of trouble keeping up with them. And when they were about 14 months old, we moved into a 2-story house, which is when she had to admit to us that her knees just couldn’t take it. Running after them on one level was difficult enough, but two levels would be murder for her. She had to leave us.

So hiring somebody who may be perfect for one stage of your child’s life may be great for the moment, but you need to look beyond that. Try to find somebody who can grow with your child and be perfect for all those wonderful stages.

My next piece of advice is more difficult to do, but necessary. It’s not only important to know the person you are hiring, but also her family and friends. Obviously you can’t run background checks on everyone (although it would be great if you could!), but you should ask her questions about the people closest to her.

Here is a true story to illustrate why this is important. My third nanny, whom I’ll call Jane, had a male roommate. No big deal, he was just a friend (actually he was gay, so I really didn’t have a problem with it!). Because St. Louis can be a really small big city sometimes, I found out that he wore an ankle bracelet because he was on house arrest for something, but Jane didn’t know what. My mistake was not pushing her to find out, because when I finally did find out (through my own means), it turned out it was for inappropriate conduct with a minor. I FREAKED!!!

I immediately called the agency who helped me hire her to ask their advice. Here was my dilemma: I loved her as a nanny, but she showed extremely poor judgment in sharing an apartment with this individual without knowing all the facts. On their advice, I drafted a contract requiring her, among other things, to leave my house key with me every night (there was NO way I was letting her bring that to where he could get it) and she could not discuss my family or my children with him under any circumstances.

When I presented this to her the next day and told her what I had found out, she was (I was glad to see) horrified. She signed the contract, and to my delight, moved out into her own apartment that following weekend.

Now, I’m not naive enough to think we can know everyone in our nanny’s life, but a little knowledge can go a long way. You are inviting her to be in your home, so it’s okay to pry a little, be a little nosy, and ask a few questions about her surroundings. It’s your right and it’s your duty. And frankly, if she has a problem with it, maybe she has something to hide. I’m just saying…

Karen

HOW TO FIND YOUR OWN MARY POPPINS

So you read my last post and decided, “It’s OK, I can learn to share my my home with another woman. I really, really want a nanny.” Good for you! Now the hard work begins: How do you find the perfect nanny for your family?

You basically have 2 choices: find one yourself or use a service. If you’re going to use a service, there are many, many websites that can help you do this. All I can say, is please check them out before you use any of these. I can recommend Nannies4Hire.com and Care.com because I have spoken with and worked with the owners and can vouch for their professionalism and character (and no, I have not been paid to promote their companies). As for the rest of the on-line services out there, I’m sure there are many good ones, even great, but I don’t have any personal experience with them, so just use your best judgment. Also look in your Yellow Pages for local services, which is what I did. I liked the personal touch (okay, and I didn’t really know about the on-line services 10 years ago!) and found a fabulous service in my area to help me.

If you want to try to find your nanny on your own, there are many different avenues to try. After my first nanny left, I thought I’d try to save some money and look myself. I asked friends for referrals, but that didn’t really get me anywhere, so I put an ad in the local paper. WOW! Let’s just say I learned to net out some of the responders over the phone, but still, it was quite the experience! I did, however, find a woman to be our next nanny. In The Caregiver Organizer, there are tools to help you with interviewing, and even a Work Agreement, which is necessary to outline what is expected from the nanny, as an employee and from you, as the employer. You MUST get background checks on anyone you plan on hiring, though. There are services who will do these checks for you. I cannot stress this step enough! (Next week, I’m going to write about why it’s also important to know the people in your nanny’s life as well…stay tuned!)

Here’s my true story for the day: The woman who I hired on my own turned out to have some, well, let’s just say “baggage.” I finally let her go after about 6 months. When I went back to the service who had helped me find my first nanny, I told them about her. They immediately knew who I was referring to. They had interviewed her, but had not taken her on as a client because they had seen some “issues” with her that I had not seen. Lesson learned: Sometimes letting the professionals do their jobs is worth the money they charge. Hmmmm!

Karen