Firing offense or no?

[Anonymous]

Summer nanny is a 24 yr old former camp counselor. Lots of camp experience. Not much nanny experience. When she started I explained that our two boys, ages 11 and 9, can stay home alone for brief periods of time, as in long enough to drop off their sister at a playground program ten minutes away. And during this time they are equipped with a cell phone and both have taken "home alone" classes and know what the rules are.

Today, she decided that she would leave our six year old daughter home alone while she went to pick up my oldest child from camp. Round trip she would have been gone at least 25 minutes, and my guess is it was more like 40-45. I found this out because my daughter happened to mention it at dinner.

Summer nanny is nice enough but this seems like a significant lapse in judgment to me. My just-turned-9 yr old shouldn't be out in the position of babysitting a 6 yr old. Nanny was within ten to fifteen minutes of our house the whole time but still...she left them alone.

Title of my post asks the key question: firing offense or not?

[Anonymous]

Nanny here. I'm confused, was the daughter home alone or with the 9 year old?

[Anonymous]

You get what you pay for.

[Anonymous]

I think if the daughter was by herself- it's a pretty bad offense.

If she was there with the 9 year old, and he kept her and then safe, lucky you!

I'm a nanny and the way I think about firing nannies is, if the kids really like her and she adores the kids, maybe try to talk about problems and find solutions. Unless she's really incapable of making right decisions and endangers your children. Not everybody is perfect, nannies learn a lot too.

But thinking now again about it, if I left my last families wild kids 6 and 9 year old at home by themselves for that long, I'd probably be in jail now. Hopefully your kids are calm and didn't get hurt, and mostly, didn't get scared. I babysit a 9 and 14 year old, parents asked me once to pick up the younger one around the corner, 14 year old locked all the doors, was too scared to be robbed . So yea, hopefully they weren't scared

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nanny here. I'm confused, was the daughter home alone or with the 9 year old?

Home with the 9 yr old, her brother. He turned 9 in May. Not exactly babysitting material.

[Anonymous]

Pay peanuts, you get monkeys

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pay peanuts, you get monkeys

This is the second post about money. Where does it say how much she's getting paid? FYI, she's getting paid well over what most summer nannies are paid. As in 1.5x the going rate for our area. So I shouldn't be getting monkeys!

[Anonymous]

Haha funny about the monkeys

I think she's very young and inexperienced as a nanny, as you said. So I don't think you should pay her that much if she has no nanny experience, she obviously wasn't the most qualified person to hire as a nanny...and for that money!!!
See what she says if you talk to her. If she's really sorry, maybe give her another chance. If she blows you off, bye bye

I think you're the only one who can make the decision, it is pretty bad though... I'm the same nanny from before

Now silly question, let's say you lay her off, would you pay her severance?

[Anonymous]

None of your kids should stay home alone !
You're a bad parent and you got a bad nanny.

[Anonymous]

You need to find a professional, OP.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't leave any of them home alone. If you insisted I would quit.

[Anonymous]

Instead of assuming the worst, have you told her what your daughter said? Kids concept of time is not ,as you should know, very reliable.
Maybe she got held up during the pick up or understimated how long it would take her.

You need to communicate with your nanny and not take your kids word for it.

[Anonymous]

I am in California but my understanding is that it is illegal to leave a 6 yr old home alone with a 9 yr old.

Regardless, you have hired someone with no common sense. You are going to have to spell everything out for her - preferably in writing - and keep a very, very close eye on her. Post all the rules someplace where she can see them (like on the refrigerator).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Instead of assuming the worst, have you told her what your daughter said? Kids concept of time is not ,as you should know, very reliable.
Maybe she got held up during the pick up or understimated how long it would take her.

You need to communicate with your nanny and not take your kids word for it.

Her 9yr old brother confirms they were left home together. I base my time estimate on the average amount of time it would take me to and from camp plus "extraction" time to get my kid to actually leave. Camps usually have a slow drip at checkout with kids not really quite ready for another 5-10 minutes, plus my son loves to linger.

This is the start of our third week with her. During her first week, she showed up 15 min late on day 1, 20 min late on day 2. I told her we needed reliable on time arrival, she apologized, has been on time since then. But this just feels like really poor judgment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Haha funny about the monkeys

I think she's very young and inexperienced as a nanny, as you said. So I don't think you should pay her that much if she has no nanny experience, she obviously wasn't the most qualified person to hire as a nanny...and for that money!!!
See what she says if you talk to her. If she's really sorry, maybe give her another chance. If she blows you off, bye bye

I think you're the only one who can make the decision, it is pretty bad though... I'm the same nanny from before

Now silly question, let's say you lay her off, would you pay her severance?

24, turning 25 next month, shouldn't be so "young"! I was a camp counselor and a ridiculously responsible person so I clearly misjudged the amount of common sense she'd have after having worked with kids for 7 years.

As for severance, she is supposed to work with us only for another two weeks. Not sure if I would pay her for that time or maybe just pay her for end of this week and move on. We agreed to her high rate only because she was going to be here for such a short period of time. Now we'd have to fill that gap quickly with mostly our vacation time.