Recommendation Wednesdays

I have had a lot of friends and family members recently ask me how to find good childcare in the Washington, DC area. As a former nanny in the area I am very tapped into the local "nanny network" and below is an article I wrote to explain the methods one should take to find appropriate childcare in this city. I hope that you find it useful and that you pass it along to your friends and family.



How to Hire the Right Nanny for Your Child


Sometime after the birth of your child, you will hit a point when you need to consider hiring some professional help. For some women that means employing a full-time nanny so that the mom can return to work. For others, it means getting part-time help so that the mom can work part-time or just have some time to complete her chores and the running of her household, without always having a baby in tow.

Whatever your needs may be, it is important to take the right steps when going through the process of finding the right caregiver for your child. Of course every parent wants to hire Mary Poppins, because if you can’t be there with your child yourself, you want the next best thing and for many people, Mary Poppins is the ideal candidate. That being said, you have to realize ahead of beginning your search for the perfect nanny that there is no Mary Poppins and that if she did exist outside of the Disney movie, she would already be employed by someone else.

Common sense tells us a lot of what we need to know about finding a suitable nanny-do your research and make sure you thoroughly screen all candidates-this person will be caring for your most valued baby. Always be prepared and ask a number of questions in order to get to know the person etc. These things are obvious and what any parent would do. To really get the inside scoop on a person who you are considering hiring to watch your child you need to do the following three things.

Your first step in the hunt for a nanny should be to tap the network. Talk to friends, family, and other moms in the area and ask those people if they have a nanny and if so where did they get her? Often times this will lead to referrals. When I was a full-time nanny working in DC, I often babysat on the weekends for families other than the one that employed me as their full-time nanny. The mother would recommend me to friends of hers, or women from the neighborhood would approach me at the local park and inquire if I was interested in making some extra cash on the weekends, doing some part-time babysitting for them.

Some other great resources for tapping the network are: 1) put an ad on craigslist.com. The pre-screening can be done via an anonymous email account and from there you can do phone interviews to get to know the candidate before meeting in person. 2) Place an ad in a local paper like a Gazette or a college newspaper. Universities and colleges are huge resources of employable young people who are often looking for work and who have flexible hours. If you live close to a university or college call and ask where you should place the ad for hiring a part time sitter. Is it best to do it in the college paper or is it better to hang a flyer on campus somewhere? 3) Billboards. Make a flyer stating your needs and what you are looking for and hang it around your neighborhood on billboards at supermarkets, parks, and high schools. Again you can do interviews over the phone before meeting candidates in person. These billboards usually also have flyers made up by nannies looking for new jobs or extra weekend hours so you can take down their information and contact them if you are interested. 4) Hit the net. There are various websites that are devoted to helping you find appropriate childcare and most sites let you register and view resumes and profiles (for a small monthly fee) of candidates that are available in your area. 5) Hire an expert-if you have tapped out the local network and exercised all the contacts you have in the mom world and dislike the idea of daycare, hire an agency to help you find a nanny. Yes, this will cost you a little more money up front (a finder’s fee) but someone will do the searching for you, according to your specifications.

You may get lucky right away and get a name from a friend. Even though this is a slim chance, there is also the possibility that your friend’s nanny has other friends who are nannies and one of them may be looking for work. When I worked in DC, I had a whole group of other friends that I hung out with who were also full-time nannies. Our nanny clique organized play dates, birthday parties, trips to the zoo, and lunches. We were our own nanny network. Even if you don’t get the name of a potential candidate, at the very least you will gain valuable insight from other parents who have already had the experience of hiring a nanny. While everyone’s experience is different, getting advice from other parents can save you from making some of the mistakes that they did and it can also grant you the benefit of knowledge about what did work for them. Overall it is worth it to tap the network and complete your research on this topic before you begin interviewing candidates. You will feel more prepared and you will have a clear plan of how to hire a nanny.

Once you have decided what qualities you want your nanny to have, it is important to outline a list of questions, so that you can determine if each candidate possess those specific traits or not. While most parent know ahead of time what they consider to be the “perfect nanny” you have to remember that just like so many other things in this world, you get what you pay for. If you want Mary Poppins, you are going to have to be reasonable and realize that you will have to pay top dollar for the cream of the crop of the nanny world. Educated, experienced nannies are going to cost more. One time I interviewed with a family who was great and it was an ideal job in most respects, except that this particular family was not willingly to pay me the going rate. They felt that my time was worth a lot less and that sent a clear message to me about what it would be like to work for them. I ultimately took another job since they were not reasonable about my pay rate. For the amount of work they wanted me to do; they did not want to pay me a comparable rate for those tasks. Remember, like other jobs out there, nannies with more experience and better resumes are going to have their pick of various jobs and are going to command a higher salary than most, since their qualifications dictate that they have earned the right to do that. Do not go into the interviewing process with high hopes of finding the perfect nanny who miraculously charges $5.00 less per hour than the going rate, because you will be disappointed.

Lastly, look at interviewing candidates as a big game of match making. Not every great nanny is the right nanny for you. Finding someone who you are comfortable with and who your child is comfortable with is important and you may not feel right about every candidate. When I recently interviewed babysitters there was this one candidate, Sarah, who was great. She was experienced, getting her master’s degree in education, and she was first aid and CPR certified, but during the entire interview process she paid more attention to our lazy bulldog than she did to my son. When Sarah did ask me questions about the job, she chose to inquire about my handbag that was sitting on the counter, instead of asking anything about Bruno, the hours, the details of the job or what the pay rate was. To me her lack of interest in my son and the job I was offering seemed to bore her. She was an example of someone who looked great on paper and who had a lot of really great qualifications, but she just did not seem like what I was looking for. She may be great, but she was clearly not the right fit for my family.

Remember, some candidates may be experienced and great on paper, but may not share your views on discipline or parenting. While you don’t have to see eye-to-eye on everything, you have to feel like your nanny respects your rules of parenting and that she will enforce those rules in the same way that you would when you are not around. On the flip side, you need to be aware that a nanny may get multiple job offers from various families and that if she chooses to decline your offer of employment, it is no reflection on you, your child, or the way you parent. Finding a nanny is like finding a wedding dress, you know it when you see it. Don’t be deceived by the outward appearance of it, because it is about how well it fits and how you feel inside when you try it on.