I think if you can afford it, it's great to keep the nanny on and have her transition to more of a house manager-type role - managing drop-offs and pickups and activities, but also grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, managing home repairs and maintenance. However, it isn't necessary. Most of my friends are two-career couples who use aftercare. Most of them do some work after the kids are in bed to make up for having to keep fairly strict hours.

Here are the things we've found. We don't have a nanny. We now live in the Midwest and no one I know has nannies for elementary school kids.

- Stagger your work schedule with your spouse. I work early (7-4), he works late (8:30-5:30). We have demanding, yet flexible jobs. He WFH 3 days a week, I only WFH when needed (but can whenever I need to).

- We do after care at the school. We've been able to avoid before care with my DH working a later schedule. The bus comes to our neighborhood, so he just has to put her on the bus and not battle the car line. This fall, she will actually bus home 2x a week so we can get her to activities on time.

- Aftercare has "no school days" where they can provide child care, but they are at a different school and we have to pay for them, so we've not done that. Well, we did it once and DD hated it because she didn't know anyone. We WFH on no school days and stagger our schedules

- We will do a childcare swap with another working parent. I take their kid one day, they take my kid the next day.

Anonymous wrote:We use Extended Day for school. This covers weekdays until 6pm and all Early Release days.
Snow days - stay home. Usually I will take a few neighbor kids until lunch and then my kid will go to a friend’s house after lunch for a few hours while work remotely. Kid is sick, we stay home depending on who has less urgent meetings.
Random breaks, we sign up for day camps and trade play dates with neighbors.

Days off school are not the challenging part. The kid activities that assume I can drive a kid across Arlington and have them fed, dressed and ready for a sports practice at 5pm are the issue. Of course you don’t find out the day/time/location of soccer/baseball/flag football until the week before practice starts.

This is what I've found as well.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Jobs are flexible to a point (no one is a surgeon/pilot, etc) but each could have days where flexibility was difficult. Nanny financially would be possible but it seems like a lot of money for having a child mostly in school. Thanks to everyone who offered insight thus far.

I will say that if you choose to get a nanny, then you will only find a high quality nanny if you pay for 40 hrs of work, regardless of how many hours nanny is working, and pay overtime for any weeks outside of their normal work schedule (meaning if you are paying them for 40 hrs and they are typically only working 30, I'd pay them OT for the weeks they actually worked over 30 hours).

Here's what my unicorn nanny would do

On a regular school day:
- Arrive at noon
- Do some housework (do the dishes, clean the kitchen, do and fold laundry, make sure all the bathrooms are stocked with toilet paper - yes, I know that's a weird one)
- Make dinner or at least do dinner prep so all I have to do is put something in the oven or heat it up
- Pick up the kids from school or the bus stop
- Drive kids to/from whatever afternoon activities they participate in (e.g. sports, academics, tutoring, playdates, whatever)
- Leave when DH or I get home or are done for the day around 5:30

On a school holiday:
- Work 9:00 - 5:30

Over the summer:
- If there is camp, pick kids up from camp, take them to afternoon activities, clean/prep dinner if there is time, leave when DH and I get home
- If there is no camp, just ferry the kids to/from activities, find fun stuff for them to do

Again - UNICORN NANNY.

We live in Fairfax County and the SACC program provides coverage for almost all non-federal holidays. You can pay for spring and christmas break separately, which we have done if we're not traveling. Summer break is filled with camps or visits to or from the grandparents.

All other days (including days when the kids are sick), we split between me and DH depending on our workloads and vacation time availability.

It has gotten a lot easier now that DH and I are both able to work a hybrid schedule.

We kept our nanny full time when the youngest went to full day school. Sure came in handy when the pandemic started.

Two lifesavers for me:
--find a sitter from the school, extended day is a good place. When school is closed, have an understanding that they can/will sit that day, at least in the afternoon on snow days when roads are better, and
--find a 14 or 15 year old who can come to your house before you get home, fold your laundry, set the table and hang out with the kids when you get home while you pull things together. I needed this when my kids were really little.

Extended Day, summer camps, one local grandparent who can help occasionally. One of us has a govt job that allows for telework frequently, the other with a govt job that allows for occasional telework. Its like others have said - plan ahead and find those care options.

No nanny no au pair. Just incredibly blessed with cushy gubmt jobs and wfh

Your plan of aftercare and a part-time sitter will be plenty. Aftercare covers all of the school holidays. There are a ton of places that offer "snow day" camps in our area (and most other urban areas). For sick days, either you or your spouse works from home or takes a day of leave. I assume your kids have been in daycare and you know the "sick day" drill?

What are you going to use the part-time sitter for? Driving to activities after school?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2 kids (1 in ES and 1 in daycare) here. During school year, they are in school/daycare 7am to 6pm. We use before/after care for ES kid, and they cover some closing days. We plan to take PTO for non covered days and for sick days for both kids. For summer, they are in camps full day.

We could use day camp for non covered days, but due to covid, we limit exposures to different group of kids. It is manageable, and we have tons of vacation hours to cover for those days. We have not traveled for a long time, many pto days saved

Weird

Not weird, different concerns and priorities. You don’t know their reasons. I have a ton of PTO stored now, mainly because we didn’t travel during COVID until after the vaccines were released and all the adults in our family where vaccinated. We also waited for COVID restrictions in the locations we were traveling to be lessened so that we could go out and enjoy our vacation. as a result, I have about 4 weeks of saved PTO, which is great to have in the bank.

We have travelled a good amount but that is a risk we are willing to take. DS goes to camp full time this summer. That is an acceptable level of risk for us. DS is currently in bed with COVID, our first go around in our house. I have been back in the office 4-5 days a week for months now. DS was at an outdoor camp. Maybe I was asymptomatic and passed it to him. Maybe he got it at camp. Who knows. COVID is out there and people who are at high risk or close to someone who are at high risk have good reason to continue to be cautious.