What do you do when your nanny goes on vacation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some colleges let out early May so still worth posting on local list serve. Otherwise care.com.

New poster here—yes, I am a mom of college students and their schools let out the first week in May (last final is May 6)

[Anonymous]

I would have planned to take vacation for at least some of this time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our nanny is taking a two week vacation in a few months. She is wonderful and absolutely deserves some time off.

What do other people do in this situation? Two weeks is a lot of time for us to take off work. We can work from home, so we could try and patch together enough breaks in our work day to cover the kids. That would be fine for a day or two, but two full weeks would be rough. We don’t have any family or friends who aren’t working. The kids will be 9 months and 2.5 years. Honestly just the baby we could handle, and the 2.5 year old takes a long afternoon nap, but in the morning, he really needs to be out playing at the park for a long stretch. Are there places you can do drop in care? We’re in Columbia Heights. Or are there temp nannies? How do you vet them?

Easy. You take off a week and DH takes off other week. A no brainer!

[Anonymous]

We have backup care at work. We hire someone through that and for the first day watch them an assess by taking a work at home day. Or better, you use the agency in advance a couple times, find the good person and request them for the weeks you really need.

We've had amazing subs (excellent nannies between jobs) and less excellent ones. Mostly they are fine, though, so if you need to work, it will work out.

My job covers 10 days of backup care through care.com's service (they choose a certified person for the day). I believe some nanny agencies also do this -- our nanny agency would also offer this for free if you worked with them to hire your nanny.

[Anonymous]

We planned grandma visits for nanny’s vacation - my mom for the first week and DH’s mom for the second week (both live a flying distance away).

The only problem we have is how much the kids miss Nanny although having the grandmas was a treat for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would have planned to take vacation for at least some of this time.

Same here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our nanny is taking a two week vacation in a few months. She is wonderful and absolutely deserves some time off.

What do other people do in this situation? Two weeks is a lot of time for us to take off work. We can work from home, so we could try and patch together enough breaks in our work day to cover the kids. That would be fine for a day or two, but two full weeks would be rough. We don’t have any family or friends who aren’t working. The kids will be 9 months and 2.5 years. Honestly just the baby we could handle, and the 2.5 year old takes a long afternoon nap, but in the morning, he really needs to be out playing at the park for a long stretch. Are there places you can do drop in care? We’re in Columbia Heights. Or are there temp nannies? How do you vet them?

Easy. You take off a week and DH takes off other week. A no brainer!

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you have any friends whose nanny you could borrow?

We did this once when our nanny had to leave on a family emergency for 2 weeks. Our friend's nanny that did housework and errands while the kids were in elementary school came over and watched our kids instead. It worked out perfectly because she could only watch our 2 kids until 2 because her charges got out at 2:35, and we only needed someone from 9-1:30-2 because my spouse was able to leave work after core hours were over at her job.

Nannies are not furniture that your can borrow when your chair is broken. They accept jobs to work for one family, not to be loaned out as if they were slaves. Everyone with child knows they must have several backup plans for child care in case nanny gets sick, daycare closes early, inclement weather.

Lol. Thanks for the laugh. I have a great part-time nanny position and my employers have referred me many times for back-up situations like OP's. Extra money for me and I can always say no. No one is being a slave here troll.