Tue 27 Mar 2012
My cousin Jennifer just had to let their nanny go last week. I was surprised, because this nanny took care of Jennifer’s sister’s baby, Elle, for years. I knew communication was difficult between my cousin and the nanny, since the nanny spoke very little English. Jennifer figured she’d just use Google Translate and write sentences in English and then show her the Spanish translation, and the nanny can do the same back from Spanish to English, but another blow when she found out the nanny’s illiterate in Spanish. So I asked Jennifer what happened. Turned out Jennifer noticed the nanny seemed to be gone, along with the baby, all day on Thursdays (thanks to nanny cams). Jennifer had told her it was okay to take the baby on a stroller walk in their big complex and common areas, but not to leave the gated community. You wouldn’t think that’s a problem since the nanny doesn’t drive anyway. But where do they go for hours? Jennifer asked the nanny early on, upon her return on such a Thursday, and the nanny just said they went to take a walk. But it kept happening, all day, on Thursdays. Jennifer finally took an afternoon off and went home around 3:30p last Thursday to see what was going on. The home was empty. She walked around the whole area looking for them. Nope. She waited at the community’s gate for HOURS. Finally, a white pick-up truck drove thru and she saw her nanny in there. Mind you, the nanny does not have a car seat for the baby. Jennifer confronted her and she said something about having lunch, going to a store, but the area they live have nothing like that within walking distance. But the bottom line is, the nanny lied about not leaving the community, lied about where she’s been every Thursday, and disregarded Jennifer’s original rule about not taking the baby out of the residential community. She claimed (through translation by an out-of-state daughter via phone) that she’d only taken the baby walking and that “Jose” saw them passing by and picked them up to give them a ride. Who was Jose? If the cops had stopped them for a baby not being in a carseat, then took the child into protective custody, how in the world would they begin to identify the baby? How would Jennifer know where to begin looking for her child when she came home if something happened? They thought about it and knew they couldn’t trust this nanny again; they just weren’t going to be comfortable with leaving the baby with her again.
I offered Jennifer my online nanny site access so she could look around. I knew there were nannies in her area; a lot of nannies who contacted me live in her city. She and her husband had gone around in a mad rush to find a daycare without a long wait list to put their baby in starting today, and I knew that was not something either of them actually want. “But I’m not sure if I can trust a nanny again,” Jennifer said. She told me about her boss, who was on their 3rd nanny for their kid. With the first nanny, the husband got a call from their cleaning people saying it was odd that a lot of their personal belongings are sitting inside their luxury car at home, and suggested he come home ASAP. By the time the husband got home, the nanny had stolen a bunch of their stuff AND the car and was across the country. I’m not sure what happened with the second nanny, but now they’re on their third.
I REALLY hope my nanny issues were just early on, and that we have a long loving relationship with Laura and her family ahead.
I would like to say not all nannies are bad. I am a full time nanny and I adore my job and family. I went thru a few, unhappy jobs to find the right family and figure out what I wanted. It goes both ways like that.
Don’t give up, and pay the money for the best nanny you can find. I get paid well, but I am a double major in psychology and child development major with a double minor in human services and social services. I have CPR/first aid/1st responder license and lifeguard and swim teaching licensure.
They pay me $12/hr, but I work with the kiddos on everything from homework, talking to their teachers to supplement what they do in class outside of class, etc.
Dont let her get her hopes up! Or yours! Try Care.com and sittercity.com
It is worth the work to interview and call references 🙂
Hi Cathryn! You sound like the kind of nanny we’d really wanted, but that we couldn’t afford. Since my husband and I work far from home, we’d have to pay someone for 11 hr days, so that’s 8 hrs base pay plus O/T which, at your level, would be almost pointless for me to go to work. Not that you aren’t worth the price, but I’ve found that most people who could afford nannies as qualified as you don’t have to be away from home so much, or so often.
This post is quite a few months old; I did interview and check references, but turned out that the nannies we found from sites like you gave online never worked out, and we ended up going another way. My cousin Jennifer couldn’t find herself comfortable with nannies again and was surprised how well daycare worked out, so she has her baby in full time daycare now. Her baby just turned 1 this weekend and is healthy and happy.
12.00 an hour? Through car.com I get 18.00 an hour at least. You get what you pay for!
It’s a small niche group of the population who can afford to pay their nannies $4500/mo ($18/hr for 8 hours plus time and a half for the 3 hours OT for our 11-hour days at 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month) plus all taxes and SSI, etc required. Maybe you do get what you pay for, but that price makes the jobs less available.