Reply to Nanny or childcare

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Nanny or childcare"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’d go with au pair. They are more open to moving schedules than nannies who want reliable hours in specific windows. [/quote]

Yeah, this is what I thought, and the au pair agencies really try to sell this. But the reality is that most au pairs get pissy and entitled if you want them to work evenings or weekends, and they will rematch and leave you in the lurch at the drop of a hat. I found them to be even less reliable than nannies, who were also unreliable.

OP, the benefit of daycare is that it doesn't all rest on the shoulders of one person who could flake and throw your life into a tailspin at any moment. It's just always there (barring crazy events like the pandemic, and even then, ours reopened fairly quickly). Au pairs are so unreliable that the last time I had one, I kept my kids in full-day daycare in case the au pair quit (which she did, within a month. She didn't like working evenings and weekends. Not sure when she thought she would be working, since she was told from the beginning that the kids were in preschool/ daycare all day, and I needed her to work outside of those hours so I could focus on taking care of my terminally ill parent).[/quote]

Same experience with au pairs.  They are (IME) flakey, nerdy, and way too much drama.  But we went with a live-out nanny who’s worked out brilliantly.  We don’t like group care for babies and having a good nanny gave the kids what they needed and then some and gave us freedom.  The daycare connected to our hospital was okay but not great (two-year-old room didn’t even have windows and the good babies were pretty much ignored in the baby room) for the kids when they were young.  Our oldest goes to preK there now but nanny picks him up at 3.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics