How to Families in New York See Their Nanny
Wealth Matters
Finding a Nanny Who Fits With Your Family unit
IF you're lucky enough to have a nanny like the i Shachar Scott has, ane who was with her at the hospital when her twins were born more than than three years ago, does everything she wants, keeps her informed when she travels and gets forth brilliantly with the family, terminate reading now.
For everyone else with a nanny, heed up: You're probably doing it all wrong. Peradventure y'all're expecting too much or non being honest about yourself and your children. Peradventure you're missing the cues that your nanny is fed upward with your micromanaging and is going to leave any solar day at present. Or perhaps you picked the wrong kind of nanny from the start.
Whatsoever the case may be, the row y'all're hoeing can be tougher than people who are juggling day care or parental help might think (though don't expect any sympathy). One of the reasons is most parents don't understand what their nanny wants, does and expects in return.
Or then says Tammy Gold, in her new book, "Secrets of The Nanny Whisperer: A Practical Guide For Finding and Achieving the Gold Standard of Treat Your Kid" (Perigee, 2015). Ms. Gold is a family unit therapist in Short Hills, N.J., whose practice has grown to include coaching, consulting and crisis direction for nannies and the families who employ them.
Her book serves as both a how-to and a how-not-to guide to the unregulated and unaccredited earth of nannies. The International Nanny Clan estimates there are 1.2 million nannies in the U.s., merely Ms. Gilded said the real number is double or triple that, given how many nannies are paid off the books. The boilerplate pay, she said, is $12 to $15 an 60 minutes.
Parents looking to hire a nanny may envision a Mary Poppins type, quirky merely total of dearest and lessons. Simply just similar the Banks family unit in the books and movies, many families have to settle for Katie Nana, the nanny who storms out before Mary Poppins blows in. In existent life, Ms. Aureate said, nannies typically stay from one to 2 years.
Relationships that last longer by and large work because the nanny is able to adapt through a kid'southward developmental stages, and the parents' needs and domicile remain relatively constant.
The people who call someone like Ms. Gold for help are typically first-time parents who are clueless, or families who have already cycled through several nannies and want to know what they're doing incorrect. (She said her typical customer had gone through three nannies in a year, though she had i customer who had 8 nannies in 13 months.)
1 of the large mistakes parents brand is failing to advisedly consider their needs before setting out to find a nanny — then picking the wrong kind of nanny. There are three types, Ms. Gold hypothesizes: a parental unit nanny, a partner nanny and an executor nanny.
The parental unit nanny essentially takes over for both parents when they're at work. Executor nannies are best for stay-at-home parents who can tell them exactly what to do. The partner nanny is in between, for couples who sometimes work from habitation and want to exist more involved and other times are at work and need someone to run the house.
Problems arise, for example, when parents hire a parental unit nanny who needs to exist in charge but are dwelling themselves giving direction.
"People think you need a nanny with a college degree or a nanny who is supersmart or a nanny who is young," Ms. Gold said. "My nanny is none of that. She had raised two sets" of children from 2 families over the years.
The nanny has at present been with Ms. Gold's family for ten years and 3 children.
Role of the problem, Ms. Gold said, is that people practice the search backward and find nannies through referrals before they know what kind of nanny they desire. Amend to first make the listing of essential qualities, as well equally traits to exist avoided, she said.
Nadia Wallace, a former litigator who now owns a yoga and Pilates studio in Brooklyn, equated the process to buying an flat in New York City: Y'all might get the top three criteria on your list, but Nos. 4 and v are going to be difficult.
Punctuality was one of the top traits that she wanted, said Ms. Wallace, whose husband, as well, was working total time. She too placed a priority on finding someone who was keenly enlightened of her 2 children's safety. "I wasn't looking for a gourmet cook. I thought kindness and judgment and maturity were much more of import."
Her nanny lasted more than five years and is leaving now to become to higher full fourth dimension.
Most nanny-parent relationships fail over advice. When the relationship turns bad, Ms. Gold said, it resembles a marriage headed inexorably for divorce, with both sides misunderstanding the other.
Many more parents are guilty of overestimating the perceived value of how beautiful their home is or other benefits — like the free meals, a fancy motorcar to drive and the occasional vacation with children in tow. "I accept to exist blunt with families: The nannies don't intendance," she said. "It's a job to them. They demand to residuum the bad with the good."
And nannies, Ms. Gilded said, oftentimes resist enumerating problems with the family until they pile up. "I phone call it the nanny rules of 10," she said. "They don't vocalize their needs at an anger level of 2 or three. They wait until they get to 10 and they leave."
As much as some employers might say the nanny is part of the family, Ms. Gold pointed out that class differences and oft cultural differences separate nanny and parent.
For instance, while Ms. Scott travels for her job as a senior marketing director for West, an advertising agency based in San Francisco, she said her nanny travels more than than two hours each solar day to become to the Scott dwelling in Jersey Metropolis, Due north.J. She then works from 8 a.chiliad. to half-dozen:thirty p.g. and travels dorsum. That's two very different types of travel.
Like most things in parenting, people stumble. Many arroyo hiring a nanny similar Andrea Barzvi did. She knew the nanny wasn't perfect only she idea she could make information technology piece of work.
Ms. Barzvi's nanny has worked out, sort of. She wasn't a perfect fit after six months, but Ms. Barzvi kept her on considering she and her husband both piece of work and she feared getting a worse nanny. Having had a second child recently, she has come to realize that the nanny, who is older and less mobile, merely can't go along up. She also locked the baby in the house 1 twenty-four hour period.
"Well-nigh people would be quicker to allow their nannies become," she said. "Personally, I feel terrible putting someone out of a job. Are you e'er going to find that perfect nanny?"
Her current nanny is still caring for her children, but knows she is searching for a new one.
Not all parents are model employers, either. Jessica Summertime Thompson has been a full-time nanny since 2007 when she finished her caste at Columbia University. Her longest job was three years and she had some other for over a yr. But others lasted only a few months or weeks.
"It tin exist the best job in the world, but I ofttimes say the parents tin can exist more than challenging than the children," she said. "It can be a balance of finding the right fit so the parents don't feel I'k trying to supervene upon them and be the caput of the household. But I exercise accept to be in accuse."
Ms. Thompson said families should look at their search for nannies the way companies pursue unlike types of employees, from the long-serving to the ones who can fill a niche but will leave when that task is done.
"Some want a person to be with them from irresolute diapers through heart school," Ms. Thompson said. "If you're looking for someone who is going to be the type of nanny I am, who is not there for quite as long but for the older years tin bring tutoring to the table, that'south what you expect for."
She added, "It's well-nigh figuring out the best need for you lot and your family and finding the best fit for y'all." That, of course, is the challenge.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/your-money/finding-a-nanny-who-fits-with-your-family.html
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