Reply to Neighbors/friends taking advantage of us/our nannies

Forum Index » Childcare other than Daycare and Preschool

Reply to "Neighbors/friends taking advantage of us/our nannies"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I pay my nanny above market rate, lots of vacation days, sick etc. (Don't do medical as she gets through her DH.) I have a somewhat similar situation where there are weeks where I need flexibility in scheduling and nanny knows that I need this flexibility as was part of job description. If I had a neighbor who started hiring her to point it jeopardizes her availability for my needs-I may recognize her right to do so but her value to me is diminished and she won't be the right employee for me. If nanny choose to jeopardize her full time employment with taking on occasional gigs it seems a short sighted decision. She may very well be someone who enjoys cobbling together jobs but that's hard to make a sustainable work life on.[/quote]

OP here, so sorry, I missed the extra responses b/c work got crazy. But essentially this is post echoes much of my feelings on this issue. I've already mentioned that we did offer someone regular hours in the morning, but that person didn't want something every day. I guess also, I call them "nannies" but truly, they are just several sitters cobbled together to help us get from about 7am to 5:30 pm, w/ school from 9 to 3. Morning hours are needed only a few times a week due to DH's travel.  But I think this poster gets me, I find it strange that this neighbor/friend would hire our people to the point that jeopardizes their availability to us. I'm currently in residency and I truly don't have very much flexibility, I'll often work nights for weeks at a time and we pay a lot extra to have one of these sitters spend the nights when DH travels. Our neighbors know this. 
On top of that, we have shared the name of an occasional sitter and they had such high expectations of her that they ended up being so disappointed and treating her badly. I do not want that to happen with these sitters. And it's not that we feel like we "own " the sitters, but I hired these people expecting them to work for us, I chose not to go into a nanny share b/c I don't necessarily want them taking other people's opinions into account, I want my kids to be prioritized, and honestly, these women are not the most experienced and I don't think that they would be appropriate to have a 4 kid nanny share, include 2 young ones. They can take morning gigs, but we would be offended if it's people who knew there was a good chance we needed them.

Also, we do depend on the neighbors occasionally, and they do depend on us occasionally, we often will take their young one into school, and on occasion they'll take our oldest. We are happy to let the kids play just about every night, we truly do love them, but we'd prefer to be there, so this often occurs right after dinner (or this is how it used to work). I prefer that to them playing every day after school with the nanny in charge. That being said, I think on occasion is find, but I just feel like it's being abused.

We also have great relationships with other neighbors and when I took my maternity "leave" I often took care of other people's kids, in part to get to know the families better, in part b/c I truly like helping others, and in part to develop the type of relationship where our kids can play at each others houses and I know that they are cared for and loved. We rarely ask others to help us, but we are really appreciate of it when it happens. Anyways, we try to treat them well, none of the "nannies" worked over the two to three week holiday, and I did give them about 3 weeks pay for bonuses. We do really adore them and really depend on them. Also, just an added thought, it occurred to me that our neighbors have family coming to stay for several months, that means they likely won't be needing our childcare services for a while. Lol.

Anyways, we've discussed it with our sitters and I think we're on the same page now. I really appreciate all the thoughtful responses. [/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