How to keep nanny full-time when child is in part-time preschool
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Anonymous
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Our son will be entering part-time pre-school in the fall. He will attend from 8:15 AM to 12:30 PM. Currently our nanny is employed for 40 hours a week and would like to continue to work for us, but needs to be paid for 40 hours a week in order to live her life/meet her expenses. We love her and would like to make this work. I think if she worked from 11 to 7 M-F every day, that could work for her schedule and for us. However, obviously she would be in our house for an hour or so before she needed to leave to pick our son up from school. What are some things we could have her do during that time? I was thinking: laundry for everyone, packing our son's snacks and lunches for school, maybe grocery shopping or prepping for dinner. Anything else? The dinner help would likely not be of too much use because my husband likes to make dinner in the evenings, but I'm just trying to figure out some things that would be helpful to have someone do. Before anyone says I am rude for asking her to do non-nannying jobs, she is amenable to doing so -- her main priority is keeping a steady-paying job with a family that has been good to her for several years.
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Anonymous
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We were in the same boat a few years ago. After discussions with our nanny, she also stated that she would rather stay with us and allow her work to change from full-time childcare to part-time childcare and part-time other because she wanted to stay with us. What we did was grant her flexibility to do stuff during the school hours, so rather than say she had to be in our house from 11 until preschool pickup, we came up with things we wanted her to do each week (sometimes they needed to be done on a specific day, sometimes not) and we gave her the flexibility to do those things when she wanted. So, for example, we had her do our grocery shopping. If she wanted to do that at 8 am instead of 11 am, that was fine.
She also did some of our meal prep and cooking, mostly for cook-ahead type things since she wasn't at the stove when we walked in from work because she was with our kids at that time (they're twins so they both his preschool at the same time). She continued to do their laundry but I also gave her more work with regards to their clothes, so she would change out the clothing for each season, take things to be stitched/fixed/etc. to the tailor, drop things off at the consignment store, pick up things I ordered online from the mall, etc. She would run to Target or wherever for supplies for school projects or things needed for birthday parties. She also served as my assistant, in some ways, so I would have her return things to the post office or UPS or run other errands like that. We then moved across the country and continue to have a full-time nanny although our kids are now in elementary school. She obviously does even less childcare (except during the summers and breaks), but she does all of the above and also helps out with things around the house like ordering paper towels from Amazon when we're low, etc. The way I always handled it was to make sure my nanny was comfortable doing whatever was being asked, make sure we are compensating her appropriately (we have always paid for gas but this expense goes up when they're driving around running errands), and made sure I was respectful of their schedule, so if they told me six months in advance that they had a dentist appointment at 8 am I'd put it in my calendar and make sure I didn't ask them to do something on that day and time. Good luck working out this arrangement, it has worked wonderfully for us! |
Anonymous
| Thank you for the reply, it is extremely helpful to hear how you handled a similar arrangement. |
Anonymous
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Our nanny moved to house management handling all ordering, groceries, birthday gifts for upcoming parties (biggest help of all! She even wrapped them and had DD make the card!).
My brother’s nanny did 12 to 7 and rounded out the time with a date night. |
Anonymous
| No need till age 4 for preschool if you have a nanny. |
Anonymous
| Oh i like the idea of potentially rounding out the time with a date night as well, thank you. |
Anonymous
| What is your plan for when he has days off school? Is she supposed to be available? I was a Nanny for 7 years for the same family. Kids were one and three when I started, then gradually went to preschool then elem. They paid me full time with the understanding that I always be available during the day. I wasn’t asked to do extra work during the day. I put my time in for 4 years with no breaks, they didn’t begrudge me the free time. |
Anonymous
Nice to hear about decent employers out there. |
Anonymous
Yeah, right! Who would want to work from 11 am to 7 pm? |
Anonymous
| I was with my previous family for 8 years. The last two years I had 10 hours a week with both kids at school. The family paid me to be available for those hours, but didn’t have me do anything extra. I didn’t even have to get them to school, they let me start when preschool let out for the youngest child. |
Anonymous
| Troll |
Anonymous
| I’m guessing the person who calls troll, is jealous. I’ve had two previous families that have said that it’s a well deserved break while the kids are at school. |
Anonymous
I'm not the PP but am definitely jealous! I wish we could afford to keep our nanny after the kids start school. I don't begrudge her the downtime but as it is, we are stretching to have her, and we need the financial relief. |
Anonymous
| We recently hired a new nanny after a move. DD’s preschool schedule is similar to yours. Before DD comes home, nanny does the whole family’s laundry, loads the dishwasher and neatens up the kitchen, and occasionally does errands for us or shopping for DD (art supplies etc.) During DD’s naptime she relaxes and plans activities for the afternoon. I’m outsourcing more and more to her because she’s incredibly competent. |
Anonymous
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She’ll be there at 11, at pick up at 12.30. How far is the school? Estimate that she’ll want to be there 5-10 minutes early, and if it’s 10-15 minutes away, you’ve already used 15-25 minutes of your 75 minutes.
1. Pack snack, lunch, water bottle for the following day. (You’re responsible for Monday). 2. You start one load of laundry per day: kid clothes, towels, kid sheets, adult sheets, adult clothes. Nanny switches to the dryer when she comes in, folds and puts away kid and linens during nap. 3. Batch cook kid lunches or meal prep for family dinner. There’s not enough time for grocery shopping. A better way to handle it might be to do 7am-7pm on Monday, so she can pack Monday’s lunch, snack, water bottle and bag before taking your child to school. During school, she could do both the grocery shopping and laundry. Then if she does 12-7 (just enough time to make lunch and clean up the kitchen) Tuesday through Thursday, you’ll still have 12.30-5.30 Friday and an extra two hours for a weeknight date night. |