Nanny Shares

nolebride

Is anyone willing to share their nanny sharing experieces? We're just starting the process and are pretty clueless. What else do you pay for besides salary? We're planning to share with a family that will also have a 3 month old. Do you think that would work? I'd just love to hear anything about your experience. Thanks.

flyer23

I have a couple of blog posts on ours:

https://worklifeunbalanced.blogspot.com/2008/08/nanny-share-logistics.html

https://worklifeunbalanced.blogspot.com/2008/08/nanny-share-pros-and-cons.html

What else do you pay for besides salary? The salary is really the only ongoing cost. You might need a few extra supplies to get started, e.g. we bought an extra booster seat for the other little girl so she'd have a place to eat at our house, and we provided our PNP for her to use. But the booster seat was all of $25 (and we now use it for DD, instead of a high chair), and we had the PNP already.

The other thing is that if you want the nanny to take the kids places, you might pay entrance fees (e.g. for the zoo), class fees (e.g. for Gymboree), etc.

As for age, I've heard lots of different situations. In our nanny share, there was a significant separation in ages -- DD was an infant (4 months old when we started), the other little girl was about 18 months older than her, and then our nanny brought her daughter who was 4 years older than DD. I know many people do nanny shares with kids who are close in age, a year or less. I think there are benefits and drawbacks to both. By far the most important thing is making sure you're comfortable with the other family and with the nanny, so you get the sense that the arrangement will work out for your child -- as long as you are, the difference in ages (or lack thereof) is probably a non-issue.

Hope that helps... if you have more questions, feel free to ask!