Life as a nanny can be hectic and exhausting. You spend all day taking care of the family you work for, but who takes care of you?
If you want to do your job well, and more importantly, live a healthy life, it’s important that you take good care of your health and well-being to avoid getting ill or simply burning out.
Follow these 5 tips to help keep your health in tip top condition:
Most children will end up visiting the hospital at some point in their life. The lucky ones have a quick trip to A&E and go straight home but sometimes a longer stay is needed. This can be a very testing time for the family and you may need to step into the breach to provide support but it can be difficult to know what to do beyond keeping everything ticking over.
If there are other children in the family your job probably won’t change much athough you might end up working longer hours to allow your employers to spend time at the hospital. Ask whether siblings are allowed to visit and if the parents would like your charges to see each other. Bear in mind that some hospitals don’t allow children to go onto the ward so be ready to suggest other ways your charges can keep in touch, such as drawing pictures or speaking on skype.
You can support the parents by packing supplies for your charge ready to take to the hospital. Hospital food often isn’t appetising so if they are allowed to take snacks in then you can go to the shops and prepare a care package for them to take in. You can also keep up a stream of clean pyjamas and other clothes as hospitals can be hot and sticky places. If allowed, toys from home will help relieve some of the boredom of being stuck in a hospital bed, and for school aged children keep in touch with school in case they ask to do some homework! It’s a huge help for parents to be able to come home, empty a bag and repack it with everything that’s been laid out ready.
Volunteer to take a turn sitting at the bedside to give your employer’s a break and provide a change of scenery for your charge. Your employers will feel more relaxed leaving their poorly child with someone they know and trust too. Children’s development doesn’t stop when they’re in hospital so you can talk to the doctors and nurses about providing some suitable activities. Encourage them to play, talk and laugh with you as they would at home.
You also need to recognise that it’s a worrying time for you. Most nannies become deeply aatached to their charges and it’s difficult to see someone you love in distress. Look after yourself and don’t be afraid to share your feelings with your family or nanny friends.
When they come home from hospital your charge may have medication to take or specific care routines to follow. Make sure you’re clear on what these are and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Communication will be more important than ever and be sensitive to the fact that your employers might want to check in with you more often to see how everything is going.
If you’re a nanny and have some tips about working with a hospitalised charge don’t hestitate to share them on our Facebook page, Twitter or our messageboards.
Writing a nanny a reference can be tough. It usually means your childcarer is moving on and whether it’s your choice or theirs it’s often an emotional time. A glowing reference will help your nanny find a wonderful new job and show them how much you appreciate the job they’ve done for you.
Writing a nanny a reference can be tough. It usually means your child carer is moving on and whether it’s your choice or theirs it’s often an emotional time. A glowing reference will help your nanny find a wonderful new job and show them how much you appreciate the job they’ve done for you.
A good reference is about a page of A4 long. It often takes the form of a letter and includes your contact details so prospective employers can contact you. It should be written in the first person and split into easily readable paragraphs, each with a theme, for example your nanny’s day to day duties, their attitude to work, any particular skills they have and times they’ve gone above and beyond. You might find it helpful to refer to previous annual performance reviews when you sit down to write.
Give plenty of detail about your nanny’s current job and how that has evolved over time. If your nanny started when your child was a baby and they’re now at school you have 4+ years of very varied duties to cover! Don’t assume that a new-to-the-nannying-world prospective employer will know what ‘usual nursery duties’ or ‘daily care’ involves. Expanding on these shows what your expectations of your nanny were on a day to day basis, and of course you should comment on how well these expectations were met.
Providing specific examples will also help a prospective employer build up a complete picture of your nanny. Perhaps your nanny helped your child overcome shyness or transformed a fussy eater? By giving details of how they accomplished that you can demonstrate their approach to the children in their care as well as showcasing a positive impact they’ve had on your family.
Think about the kind of skills or attributes you really appreciate in your nanny. If your nanny is very organised or an excellent time-keeper then mention that in their reference. If the children are always laughing when you come home in the evening or they always have something they created that day to show you then share that with prospective employers. Bear in mind when writing a reference that your nanny may not always work as a nanny, or even in childcare, so highlight two or three highly transferrable skills.
A trickier task is writing a reference for a nanny who has been less than satisfactory. In this case a brief reference confirming length of employment and duties with an invitation for prospective employers to contact you will be more than sufficient.
Expect to be contacted whether you give a positive or neutral reference. Prospective employers will want to both check the veracity of your reference and ask detailed questions of their own. Be factual and honest – if they ask whether you ever needed to use a disciplinary procedure and you did then you should answer the question fully and truthfully. If that was the cause for terminating the nanny’s employment you are allowed to share that. If it was resolved satisfactorily use it as an example of how your nanny took your feedback on board and improved their performance.
Writing a reference is one of the kindest and most lasting things you can do for an excellent nanny and it will serve them all through their career, so it’s worth taking the time to do the task fully and well.
Although a performance review can also be helpful at any time if there are problems with your nanny carrying out their duties they should not be neglected if everything is going well. A performance review is a chance to praise your nanny and let them know what a good job they’re doing.
It’s a good idea once a year to sit down for a more formal meeting with your nanny to review their performance, your children’s development and plan the year ahead. You may like to do this on the anniversary of them starting work with you, at the start or end of the school year or the start of the calendar year. We’ve put together some questions you might like to consider or ask your nanny to think about before the meeting so you can sit down prepared.
Although a performance review can also be helpful at any time if there are problems with your nanny carrying out their duties they should not be neglected if everything is going well. A performance review is a chance to praise your nanny and let them know what a good job they’re doing.
Many nannies expect a pay rise, or at least a pay review, at their annual review. If you don’t want to discuss finances then let them know in advance that the meeting is solely about their performance and you’ll set aside another time to discuss pay.
Schedule the review for a time when there are no children around. Children can be a distraction and it’s especially important that you are able to be honest with your nanny if either of you have concerns about the children or if you have something negative to say.
We hope you find these questions helpful in facilitating communication with your nanny about their performance and your needs!
The year just gone:
Is the nanny able to do everything on their job description? Is there anything they are doing which is not in their job description? Does the job description need to be modified?
How has your nanny coped with the workload? How do they feel they have coped?
What have been your nanny’s strong points this year? What are areas for improvement?
Have there been any problems? How were they resolved?
Are the any developmental concerns about the children?
The year ahead:
Are there any foreseeable changes to duties?
Are there any activities it would be good to introduce? How can the children’s development be stimulated?
Do any strategies for behaviour management need to be recapped or reviewed?
Are there any areas where your nanny would like to refresh or update their knowledge?
What are the goals for the year ahead? (These may be for the children, the nanny or you e.g. potty training, ensuring all laundry is up to date on a Friday night, ensuring the kitchen is tidy on a Monday morning)
Is your nanny’s salary competitive and a fair reflection of the job’s demands?
Good childcare can be expensive and some families might find themselves struggling to balance the cost of their other living expenses.
As a nanny, you can help to ease the burden for your nanny family by looking for opportunities to save them money.
Here’s how you can help!
Coupons!
Couponing is HUGE, and people everywhere, particularly large families are hunting down coupons in a bid to save money.
The idea of cutting out coupons and vouchers might seem somewhat tedious, but it doesn’t have to be. The next time you’re sitting down while the kids are watching a movie or taking a nap, have a quick look through magazines and newspapers, cut out a few coupons that apply to you and save them for later.
Follow these top tips to help you stay on top of the couponing game:
Loyalty Cards/Reward Schemes
Most shops and online retailers now have loyalty schemes that reward you with points or discounts when you shop. Things like the Sainsburys Nectar, Boots Card, even the Costa coffee card and many more can help you save money on things like; the weekly shop, clothes, pharmacy, soft play centers and fuel.
If you shop somewhere on a regular basis, it won’t hurt to ask if they have a loyalty card.
Multi-Buy Deals/Special Offers
Multi-buy deals and special offers can really help you in the long-term, particularly when they’re for frozen food or non-perishable items. Think about the future when looking at multi-buy deals and remember that spending a little more now could save you money next week.
Find the Freebies
There are plenty of online retailers and companies offering freebies of new products in exchange for something small. Some want reviews of their products, others simply want to spread the word. Some might want your email or home address for marketing purposes, so check the T’s & C’s before you sign up!
Shop Smarter
Use our top tips to start saving today. Apply them to your own spending as well as your nanny family’s and you’ll both be saving money in no time.
If you have any money saving tips you’d like to share, get in touch in the comments!
Many of us are familiar with the frustration that comes along when your boss or manager constantly breathes down your neck telling you how to do your job. It’s undermining, infuriating and annoying, and if done often enough, it can make you hate your job.
Paragraph
Many of us are familiar with the frustration that comes along when your boss or manager constantly breathes down your neck telling you how to do your job. It’s undermining, infuriating and annoying, and if done often enough, it can make you hate your job.
Now imagine how your nanny feels when you tell her exactly what time she needs to put your child down for a nap, how many grapes he can eat, which games she should play with him, even what shape to cut his sandwiches. Sound familiar?
Your nanny is good at her job. You checked her references, read her resumé and can see she knows what she’s talking about. Bear in mind that a great many nannies have more experience with childcare than most parents have at simply being parents. She’s been doing the job a long time, it’s her life, her passion, and you need to learn to let go of the reigns a little and trust her judgement.
It probably won’t be easy, especially if you’re a new parent, it can be difficult to relinquish control to someone new and to put faith in them being able to care for your little one the way you would. However, if you don’t do this, there’s really no point in hiring a nanny in the first place and all your micromanaging will result in a frustrated nanny, a tense relationship between you and your nanny (that your child will probably pick up on) and you’ll find yourself feeling tired and on-edge, when you should be more relaxed and confident that your child is in capable hands.
That’s why we’ve put together our top tips to help keep your micromanaging to a minimum:
Social media can be a great personal and professional tool. It enables you to keep in touch with family, friends and organisations that you’re interested in (like us!), get ideas and share your own thoughts and ideas with others. But what if you’re sharing more than you think?
Social media can be a great personal and professional tool. It enables you to keep in touch with family, friends and organisations that you’re interested in (like us!), get ideas and share your own thoughts and ideas with others. But what if you’re sharing more than you think?
Privacy and safety aren’t just concerns for high-profile families. Everyone should be aware that sharing information can be detrimental to children’s safety and it’s particularly relevant for nannies, who often have a lot more freedom during the working day to use social media, and may use it to organise spontaneous nanny meet-ups or share photos of day out. But it also means increases the risk of child abduction or images being used inappropriately. Armed with information from social media sites an abductor could identify a child from photos, find out their name, age, places they go and maybe their likes and dislikes, and even pass themselves off as a trusted friend, convincing the child to come with them.
Some parents are happy for pictures and details of their children to be posted on social media sites. As long as the risks have been discussed and everyone has agreed boundaries of what is appropriate this is between the childcarer and the family. Photos and details should never be posted without express permission. If a family are happy for photos to be taken of a child but not happy for them to be shared then childcarers need to make sure any photos with their charges are safe. Agreements about social media should be written into a contract, or provided as a separate policy.
The safest thing to do is avoid putting photos, names and places on social media sites. Once the information has been shared there is nothing to stop someone with access to it sharing it with others.
Keeping children safe isn’t the only consideration. Childcarers with open profiles need to be careful what they say as potential clients and employers could trace comments back to them. Sharing photographs of nights out is also risky, and many nannies refuse to have their employers as friends on Facebook for this reason. A timeline full of tweets complaining about children’s behaviour, while possibly light-hearted, gives a bad impression of a childcarer’s ability and commitment. Employers and agencies can easily search the internet and if they find something which reflects badly on a childcarer it will probably colour their opinion, which may mean losing out on a job.
We’re not saying you shouldn’t use social media at all – we love it! But we are saying be safe, and follow these tips:
– Check your privacy settings
– Think twice before posting comments about your work
– Don’t post photos, names or places on social media sites without verifying the security of the site and gaining permission
Nannies are seldom sick. Even when poorly most will come in and take it easy for a day or so as long as you are understanding about it. If you don’t want your nanny turning up to work with a bad cold you need to make that clear at the start. Many nannies can’t actually afford the time off every time they have a sniffle, and your children have probably already been exposed to the germs.
CRASH! Silence…..Muffled swearing.
We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Broken something, possibly something precious? Ruined a shirt or a pair of trousers? Melted a colander? Blocked the loo?
When you’re in someone’s house for 50 hours a week accidents are almost inevitable, even without counting the added risk of small children running around. Frankly it’s amazing that there are so few accidents. But what do you do when it happens to you?
Continue reading “‘Help! I broke the teapot’ and other stories”
One thing every family wants when looking for a Nanny is that extra special person to take care of their precious children so whilst they are looking for someone with experience and energy there is so much more to it.
Want to present your best self at your next interview, check out these tips on how to be the best Nanny ever!
One thing every family wants when looking for a Nanny is that extra special person to take care of their precious children so whilst they are looking for someone with experience and energy there is so much more to it.
Want to present your best self at your next interview, check out these tips on how to be the best Nanny ever!
As we say @Nannyjob there is nothing more important than finding the nanny who will make a child happy. Highlighting these qualities will show any potential new family just how you’ll fit into their everyday life
