Anyone have a live-in nanny?

[Joan]

Does anyone have a live-in Nanny? We are currently looking for child care and are considering hiring a nanny/housekeeper. How much do you pay? What other work do they do? Thanks, Joan

[Irish Luck]

We had one up until two weeks ago, things are probably a bit different here in NZ. We were very lucky to have someone who was prepared to be paid under the table ie no tax to pay!! She got board/utilities paid for minus any mobile/toll calls she made. She did the odd load of laundry and always got our evening meal prepared and occassionally cooked it. We are lucky enough to have a slef contained area downstairs where she lived outside of 'work hours', she did come upstairs as well, though usually only for her evening meal, occassionally to keep me company when DH was away. We didn't pay for stat days as I was off and looked after the kids. We did give her two weeks paid leave and five days sick leave.

When we knew she was leaving we hunted around for another live in nanny, not much luck as they either didn't want to live in or they wanted to be paid more than we could afford. Most new nannies here want $15/hr, more experienced nannies want more.

Have you thought about an aupair instead???
How old are your children?? Ours were 6 months and 22 months when she started.

I would absolutely recommend it, make sure you have a contract. Plus make sure to ask for a referee that you can phone, verbal referees are more inclined to tell you more than they can when it's written down.

We haven't been fortunate enough to find another nanny, one was supposed to start last Monday and she just didn't turn up, she had a better offer and decided not to let us or the agency know :tantrum: I was speechless when I found out. We contacted her verbal referee and they gave her rave reviews but she hadn't look after their children, she had done some house sitting for them. We were bitten this time, but if we could find a nanny we could afford we would do it again.

Some questions you may like to ask at the interviews

What' your family situation??
What are your childcare and first aid qualifications??
How do you feel about me working from home or popping in at any time??
Why do like children?? (This will hopefully flush out those who don't, and is subtly different from "what do you like about working with children?")
What are your strengths??
Why did you leave your last three jobs??? (If relevant)
What are some of the things you do with a kid this age??
Do you have a philosphy or approach to childcare?
What are your feelings on setting boundaries and discipline?
What are the bad things about the job?
What are the worst kind of parents to work for?
The baby has been crying for an hour and nothing seems to work. What do you do?
The baby vomits after a feed, feels very hot, falls asleep and you can't wake them. You can't contact the parents. What do you do? (Answer for us was call an ambulance)
I ask you to do something a certain way and you think it's the wrong way. What do you do?
How much notice do you want to give for holidays? and how much notice should we give you for our holidays without you?

Sorry didn't mean to take over this thread.

[Joan]

Thanks Suzanne! I will look into an aupair. i just hate to pay agency fees! We make a modest income and child care for a 1 year old, at a daycare is $800. per month. We have a large room with it's own entrance and i thought we could hire a nanny to care for Jakob AND do some light housework for the same amount. Thank you so much for the list of questions to ask! Joan

[gulp!]

Our nanny is live out, but we found her through craigslist.com. I'm not sure if they have one for Hawaii, though. We were impressed with the quality of people who replied to our ad, and the nanny we chose was the 3rd person who we interviewed. Our previous nanny, whom we shared with another family, also came from craigslist.

There's also a website that I perused- I think it was called enannysource.com.

[mina20]

hi jojo808. my email is rmansour13@hotmail.com, and I am interrested in a live-in nanny position if you are still offering it. Please reply