Anonymous wrote:Why did you let that happen?
Don't you have a contract that stipulates vacation time?
2 weeks is standard. 3 weeks is good. 4 weeks is awesome.
7 weeks is unheard of.
Fix it now.

This. The contract should specify vacation time. You can't just take unpaid time off in most jobs without a consequence (usually, losing said job).

It would be lovely if American employers valued family time more and offered six weeks of vacation, but they don't, so therefore, child care needs to be available too.

OP, I would specify vacation time in your contract and have it accrue as your nanny works. Don't approve vacation requests if there is no vacation time available. If you want to be especially accommodating, you can plan your own vacations out in advance and let her know when they will be so that she can dovetail her available leave with your time off to stretch it a bit farther.

Anonymous wrote:I take 8 weeks vacation per year. Only 3 are paid and the rest are unpaid. I'm European and you guys don't value family time and leave. My boss uses agencies and has temps fill in. It's not hard. I've been with my family 5 years. I know this isn't the norm and I'm grateful because Americans are unreasonable about vacation time.

right, because American companies are "unreasonable" about vacation, giving employees only 2-4 weeks.
A nanny's job is to serve the family- hence 2-4 weeks vacation.
This is how America works.

Why did you let that happen?
Don't you have a contract that stipulates vacation time?
2 weeks is standard. 3 weeks is good. 4 weeks is awesome.
7 weeks is unheard of.
Fix it now.

Anonymous wrote:I take 8 weeks vacation per year. Only 3 are paid and the rest are unpaid. I'm European and you guys don't value family time and leave. My boss uses agencies and has temps fill in. It's not hard. I've been with my family 5 years. I know this isn't the norm and I'm grateful because Americans are unreasonable about vacation time.

It's great that your bosses are so flexible, but eight weeks is NOT the norm in most European countries, I would say a more typical number in the countries I'm familiar with is four weeks.

Back to the OP's issue - it is very common, but not universal for foreign-born nannies to take extended vacations of three weeks or more to their home country, but I've never heard of anyone doing so more than once a year without extenuating circumstances (e.g., death in family). I'm an MB and I probably wouldn't agree to an extended trip requiring unpaid leave more than biannually only because we've had mixed success with temps. If my kid were older, I would be more accommodating.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it is typical of nannies whose primary family (parents, siblings, close cousins, grandparents) are in a foreign country.

People on this board are frequently accused of discrimination for warning people against hiring foreign-born nannies whose families are not also in the US, but this is why. So, so many of us have experienced this.

It is not a function of ethnicity or wealth, either. It is a function of both the expense and difficulty of travel, and cultural norms. I had a reasonably well-off British nanny who did this, too.

+1000. Been there, one of the reasons we we switched nannies. And the intitally requested 2 weeks turned into 3 weeks last minute which is also very common.

Seven weeks off is really a lot of time off.

And like you mentioned OP - It is such an inconvenience having to find back-up childcare, etc.

I advise you to have a talk w/your Nanny when she comes back.
Let her know what a hardship it is for you to find back-up care when she is gone so much.

If she needs more time off than you can give, the obvious solution here is to part ways since you two would not be a suitable match for each other’s needs.

I'm Canadian and take 2 weeks paid, two weeks unpaid. 10 days of PTO is not sufficient.

I take 8 weeks vacation per year. Only 3 are paid and the rest are unpaid. I'm European and you guys don't value family time and leave. My boss uses agencies and has temps fill in. It's not hard. I've been with my family 5 years. I know this isn't the norm and I'm grateful because Americans are unreasonable about vacation time.

I would not allow that. We do travel a lot though, and if we're traveling to or with our in-laws, we will give the nanny that time off.

I would just say no. We never offered more than two weeks of vacation. I could not have covered seven weeks of leave--!! Each of our children's nannies were from other countries and did take extended trips home, but they did it in between jobs. (We employed one for two years and one for 2.5 years, which is pretty typical in our area since the majority of families who use nannies move kids to preschool around age 2-3, so an extended break every 2-3 years could reasonably be anticipated. I imagine if we had had kids close enough in age to have continued with the same nanny, she would have requested a longer leave for a trip, and that would have been very reasonable.)

I’m not sure. As an American nanny, I have never taken tome beyond what was agreed to. My understanding is that foreign nannies tend to take additional time, but not all and generally do not go to their home country more than once per year, if that, barring unforeseen circumstances. Talk to her when she returns but do it from a questioning stand point so that she doesn’t simply say what she thinks you want to hear. Was she a nanny or an au pair prior to this position? Do you still have her reference info?

Yes, it is typical of nannies whose primary family (parents, siblings, close cousins, grandparents) are in a foreign country.

People on this board are frequently accused of discrimination for warning people against hiring foreign-born nannies whose families are not also in the US, but this is why. So, so many of us have experienced this.

It is not a function of ethnicity or wealth, either. It is a function of both the expense and difficulty of travel, and cultural norms. I had a reasonably well-off British nanny who did this, too.

It is not totally unusual for nannies with families abroad to want to travel for extended periods. Some families can accommodate that, but most can't. Many families do not permit unpaid time off above and beyond agreed vacation days, so i would start from that angle.

That is insane, you need to find a new nanny. It’s unrealistic for her to think you should accommodate her requests.

My nanny has taken a total of 7 weeks off in 2017/2018 to visit her home country. The first time was 4 weeks and this time it's 3 weeks. It's a major inconvenience for us since we have to shuffle our schedules around and find backup care. This is our first time using a nanny so I was wondering if this was typical for nannies with family in another country? 7 weeks just seems like a lot.

We're going to talk to her when she gets back about her vacation schedule for next year and if she needs to take another 7 weeks off, I don't think we can continue employing her.