Anonymous wrote:I did 2-6 as a grad student. The kids school was 2 miles from the university campus. I’d leave and get them from school, take them home for homework or to an activity, then deliver them to their parents for dinner (they ate out nightly). Our school holidays lined up pretty well (as far as bank holidays) and the mom would take off spring break and take the kids to visit family. I worked full time in the summers and had the kids from 9-6. They always paid me a guaranteed 20 hours/week year round regardless of if they used me or not.

This is important for people that want to hire a college student. Most of the colleges I know have spring break several weeks before the local public schools do (pre-covid, of course. With Covid, I know many colleges that are not having spring break.)
So if your college student nanny wants to go away for spring break, your kids will still be in their normal school week. Then during spring break if you need full time care for that week, your college nanny can't do it because she is still in class.

Post on some college sites, that might be your best bet.

Anonymous wrote:Easy to find. Look for a school monitor or assistant - that is the perfect time for them.

As a former school asst, they frequently get held up at school well past 3pm (faculty/staff meetings, after care, subbing, etc). I can’t think of any assistants at my school that are done at 3pm.

I did 2-6 as a grad student. The kids school was 2 miles from the university campus. I’d leave and get them from school, take them home for homework or to an activity, then deliver them to their parents for dinner (they ate out nightly). Our school holidays lined up pretty well (as far as bank holidays) and the mom would take off spring break and take the kids to visit family. I worked full time in the summers and had the kids from 9-6. They always paid me a guaranteed 20 hours/week year round regardless of if they used me or not.

This is exactly why people get au pairs.

Unless one of you has a flexible job, you should really consider keeping the nanny if you can at all afford it or hiring another nanny for at least 40 hours a week. you can find part-time sitters to work these hours but what ends up happening is that there’s very high turnover and a lot of them are not that reliable because realistically anything that only takes three hours a day is not going to Be the center access that they organize their lives around. It’s going to be the thing that they cancel on or worse yet don’t show up to because one of the important things in their lives changed. Trust me, we have been down that route and we paid very well and we did not expect too much but we still had really high turnover and nanny hunting every 6 months Took a lot of time that would have been better spent focusing on my job.

On top of the issues with reliability, you have to factor in that school is not reliable childcare even outside of a pandemic. in the last month we have had two days off for holidays, two days off for snow days, two different days when one of my kids was hone sick, and a teacher workday. Prior to that we had 2 1/2 weeks off over winter break. If you only have nanny care for a few hours a day, then you are going to constantly be devoting your working hours to figuring out what camp your kid is going to be in for the next significant break, and you will be constantly stuck trying to work from home and provide childcare during random snow days. Having a full-time nanny means that you have a base amount of hours covered, even if your kid spikes a fever overnight or it’s F-ing Columbus Day.

We ended up right back where we started but with a nanny that we don’t like or trust as much as our original Nanny. We should have just kept her.

Our setup is out nanny works 11-7. During the day she does the grocery shopping, does the kids laundry and household linens, and cooks (like making and freezing muffins for fast breakfasts on school mornings, making dinner on weeknights, etc.). She also is available for random errands like dropping something at the post office, she helped wrap christmas gifts, etc. She picks the kids up at 2:45 (mandatory during the pandemic, but pre-COVID, this gets them home half an hour sooner than riding the bus) so they have enough daylight to go play at the playground or ride bikes for a bit. Then she feeds everyone a snack, supervises homework and piano practice and makes sure they are bathed and in pjs before we finish work. Pre-COVID she also shuttled them to extracurriculars, which is huge because, with three kids, there are a LOT. Over Christmas break, she was flexible and shifted her hours to 10-6, which allowed DH and I to switch off who supervised kids while working for an hour so that we didn’t lose our jobs.

Keeping the nanny is well worth it because neither of us would be able to succeed professionally if we were constantly having to cancel or show up late or work distracted by kids. Whatever we spend is more than made up for by the fact that we can continue to work at this level and even try for promotions, knowing that we have reliable childcare.

Contact career center at Montgomery College, look for someone in their teacher training program. You'll have someone for a few years until they transfer to UMD or Towson, at which point you get someone new.

Nanny here- My family also kept paying me. Good thing, otherwise I wouldn’t have been available to them during the pandemic and closed school days. I would have been at my other morning job, if they only wanted me 3-6pm. If you’re a stay at home parent, then okay get rid of your nanny but if you have a serious job and don’t want to deal with people calling in sick or quitting (because let’s be real, a 15hr a week job is not going to be anyone’s priority) then you need to pay your nanny to be on call or else deal with the consequences.

Hard to find. What are you going to do for snow days, sick days, random days off, and summer? When I was a Nanny my family kept paying me when the kids were in school so they would have constant coverage. Depending on your HHI you might consider doing this.

Anonymous wrote:First realize that you’re not looking for a nanny, you’re looking for a baby-sitter, and then find a high school kid like parents have been doing for decades 🙄

Yeah really! I feel like op is going to want all the services of a nanny for 3 hours a day. No one wants that job, especially now. It’s a nanny market right now.

First realize that you’re not looking for a nanny, you’re looking for a baby-sitter, and then find a high school kid like parents have been doing for decades 🙄

Hopefully you will lower your expectations if you only want 3 hours a day. This means nanny won’t be doing laundry, cleaning your kitchen messes, and doing any other household chores. I trust you plan to pick up after yourself?

You will need to pay her a full time salary if you want her available for sick days, days off school, breaks and so on. Nannies also have bills.

I’d love this job. I retired early and my husband still works until 6 every night. I’d happily do something like this for $100 a day, with at least some sort of monthly monetary guarantee. There are people out there looking for easy cash like this!

Easy to find. Look for a school monitor or assistant - that is the perfect time for them.