Nanny Nightmares

Avoiding Nanny Nightmares (again)

A couple of days upon returning from our “big trip” to China, our current nanny who has been wonderful for the last 10 months told me that she would like to keep working for us but “live-out.” Ugh! This is about the last thing I need to handle right now – I still feel like I’m catching up on my work from being away and cannot afford any outside distractions, especially because Zoe Foods is just at the brink of taking off if we can meet consumer demand and build our distribution quickly enough.

So… childcare… I welcome your suggestions. I have made every effort in the last year to keep our current nanny happy. I’ve taken vacation time to cover for her vacation. When we’ve had vacation and she didn’t want to take hers, I paid her anyway. I’ve tried to make her feel welcome in our home – we’re easy-going and flexible and it’s been fine with nannies in the past, but she wants her own apartment. If she were to “live-out” that means a higher cost for me. Alternatively, she offered working for me in the afternoons only and receiving the same compensation. There’s no value to me in that other than I don’t have to go through the search process again and that my children can have consistency beyond the last year. Ugh. That’s what comes to mind, a big, fat, ugly, UGH!

Follow Your Intuition

I continued to interview more nanny candidates. The process had become very tedious. I even looked into hiring a nanny agency but just couldn’t get myself to spend a $3000 fee for a nanny who might only last one year. I received an email from a young woman via sittercity.com. She lived nearby and was looking for a nanny position. I phoned her and she seemed terrific. I invited her to come and meet my family the next day. After 15 minutes, I knew I had found the right nanny – finally! She stayed for a couple of hours to talk with me, my husband, and meet our kids. Yeah!

The search process for a new nanny took four months, three poor hires, and more hours than I care to count. I have come to learn that hiring a nanny, live-in or live-out, is more than just hiring another employee for Zoe Foods. This is the person who takes care of my children all day long. She loves them, has fun with them, and yes, disciplines them as well. She has free run of our home and transports my most precious cargo. She can hold me hostage or set me free.

I’ve come to the conclusion that finding the right nanny is not all that different from knowing when your significant other could also be your partner for life. You just know when you know. It’s common sense, personality, and chemistry rolled up into one. Can you imagine calling your boyfriend’s past girlfriends to do a reference check?

If you’ve read Nanny Nightmares (Chapters 1-8), I’d love to hear what you thought. My mom, my saviour in Nanny Nightmares, just read my blog and said that it was too hard to find all of the entries. She was right! So, if you missed one, you can easily find it now by clicking on the link under “Categories” to your left.

Babu to The Rescue

My mom actually had a life of her own – how could I have possibly forgotten – tunnel vision had clearly set in. Thank you mom for all of your help then and now. My dad to the rescue for a day! Have you heard that a male nanny is called a “Manny”?

Anyone who knows my father gets a good chuckle when they think of him as the “manny”. While I was growing up, my sisters and I rarely saw him during the week – he was a classic entrepreneur and workaholic. He never changed a diaper, unless you count wrapping a cloth diaper around my waist like a towel, and had never taken care of all three of his girls for an entire day. Times have changed, and at age 71, my dad was changing with them! He wouldn’t be able to check his email every ten minutes, or take every business call that came in. Instead he would have to focus on his granddaughters. And he did! I learned that my older daughter genuinely beat him in a game of Candyland. The day “Daddy” was the “Manny” I received photos of my girls sent from my dad’s cell phone. Not only were they all surviving, but also having fun. The best part about this day was that my dad started to form an independent bond with my girls. In looking back, I have learned that not only would it be great if my dad continued to spend some one-on-one time with his granddaughters, but that my husband and I should also make the same effort on a regular basis. Stay tuned for Chapter 8, the last and final chapter of Nanny Nightmares.

Too Good To Be True

SitterCity.com, 4nannies.com, enanny.com – I was through with trying to recruit someone through the local paper, and posted nanny listings on several nanny websites. I also looked into an au pair but didn’t think that would work given the number of hours we needed. Given my work load, my mom helped me to screen some candidates.

I interviewed several young women in their twenties who wanted to nanny for a couple of years – they sounded promising. Right off the bat I’d ask them how far along they were in the interview process because I didn’t want to waste my time with someone who was just about to accept an offer from another family. I spoke with about 10 different people, and about half of them told me that they were at the beginning of the interview process when they weren’t. After my husband and I spent three hours interviewing one woman over two days, she told me she had just accepted a position with a nearby family but would be happy to do some extra babysitting for my kids.  Yeah, I’ll be sure to call her.

Ugh – don’t these twenty-somethings have better things to do with their time than to waste mine? What happened to honesty and being direct? There’s nothing wrong with going after more than one job at a time, but be honest about where you are in the process.

I spoke with another woman who sounded nice who had worked for the
Tom Clancy – a real writer! She was discreet in the experiences she shared, but they did sound akin to those from a Hollywood nanny. All was moving forward with this prospect until I couldn’t reach her anymore. Turns out she was staying with her family and her sister wasn’t giving her my message because she thought I was a bill collector. Next.

No More DWI (Driving While Interviewing)

Still no nanny, but between my mom and working from home a couple of afternoons, I managed. It’s several weeks after I received my moving violation for taking a left on a red rather than sitting in the middle of a busy intersection, and it’s time to appear in municipal court to argue my case. I really thought I’d have a nanny by now. I never dreamed I’d have to pick my girls up from school, give them lunch in the car, and bring them with me to court to appeal my ticket. This really adds some diversity to their after school activities – I know, I am exposing my children to government and law. Yeah, right.

We head for the court room which is filled with decent looking citizens who are waiting for their opportunity to argue their moving violation. I wish I had thought to bring some extra books to keep my girls occupied while sitting in the courtroom, it’s incredibly quiet and every time one of my girls wiggles, it sounds loud. While we are waiting, I jot some notes down on the back of an envelope to organize my thoughts. My girls want a turn with my pen, shhh! After about 30 minutes, my youngest announces that she has to “go potty.” We’ve been working on teaching her to whisper, but all the lessons are lost in the moment. Everyone in the courtroom turns to look our direction (I am the only one with young children). I quietly walk towards the front of the room to give my name to the policeman so that I don’t miss my turn while I take my children to the bathroom.

A couple of minutes after we are reseated, the judge calls my name and I approach the front of the courtroom. I state my case simply and the judge excuses my ticket. He then tells the girls they can bring my paperwork to him, and then he can show them his light-up pen. My older daughter is too shy and stays close to me. My younger daughter brings the judge the papers and he hands her his light-up pen. She is off like a shot thinking that it was a gift. Great, now we’re going to get in trouble for stealing J. My youngest brings the judge his pen back and the courtroom gets a good chuckle. I head out with my girls to go home so they can nap, and I can get some work done. On the way to the car, my older daughter asks me, “Mommy, so what did you do wrong at that red light?” Stay tuned for Chapter 6 of Nanny Nightmares…

Driving While Interviewing

Technology is great – it allows us to multi-task. As a momtrepreneur, I always seem to be trying to do more than one thing at a time. Interviewing nanny candidates is no exception. I saw nothing wrong with trying to get an errand done during lunch and interviewing a potential nanny while I was driving. It was all local driving and I knew my way.

The Newton Center intersection… I was waiting to turn left at a five-way intersection. I was in the middle of interviewing Anne. She seemed pleasant and had excellent nanny experience. I started to ask questions about her responsibilities. The light turned green and I was the fourth car from the light. I explained that there would be no cleaning other than any mess she and the kids might make. There was a lot of traffic… But there would be laundry. All four cars waiting to turn left pulled into the middle of the intersection waiting for a break in traffic. Hmm, you don’t mind doing the laundry. Good. All three cars ahead of me turned left just as the green light turned yellow. I was the last of four cars to turn. Oh, you will not wash our private things. The light of course turns red as I start to turn left. …and you’re not comfortable going into my husband’s and my bedroom. (Aside, what does she think we do or have in there anyway?) I couldn’t back up and didn’t want to sit in the middle of a 5-way intersection, so I move forward – left on a red light – yikes.

Suddenly there’s a siren and a cop pulls me over. Hearing the sirens in the background, I tell Anne I have to go. I practically break into tears – I can’t handle it all – work, kids, nanny, laundry. The policeman told me that the three cars ahead of me deserved a ticket too, but he was only able to pull me over since I was the last in the line. It was my lucky day – a moving violation and another nanny candidate down the tubes, even if she had some hang-ups about dirty laundry. I felt like crying. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have gotten a ticket. Now I’ll have to appeal my ticket in municipal court. My husband will not be happy with me. No more DWI for me (Driving While Interviewing)! Stay tuned for Chapter 5 of Nanny Nightmares.

Week 2 and Strike 1 with Sheila as my girls’ nanny. During her second week of work Sheila told me that one of their cars died and that she would need to use one of our cars for work. Before I could blink, my husband and I were juggling our two cars, our separate commutes to work, and Sheila’s needs in taking care of our children. In retrospect, I can’t believe that we started talking about buying a third car so Sheila could take care of all six kids! Clearly, we had lost perspective.

One evening I mentioned to my husband that I had a funny feeling about Sheila, and that perhaps she was an alcoholic or something. He couldn’t believe that I could say something so horrible when I had no facts to base it on.  He was right, it was just a hunch. But somehow I knew something was not right, I just didn’t know what it was yet.  

Before we knew it, the families were merging. Her kids’ toys were at our house, ours at hers, and she was asking to borrow things like heating pads, and an ipod charger. Although her children were nice, this was becoming more complicated than what I had signed up for.

Then one school day, Sheila didn’t show up for work. I tried to reach her and left messages on her cell and home phones. No answer. I took my girls to school and wondered if I’d need to pick them up at noon. Given the drive time between our home, school, and my office, and since I couldn’t reach Sheila, I decided to work from home. At about 10am my home phone rang. It was Sheila and she sounded horrible – she slurred her words and sounded out of it.  Sheila was surprised that I had picked up the phone. She explained that she had been out with her girlfriends the night before and had eaten a hamburger and had gotten food poisoning. She had gone to the ER last night and had just returned home. I had never heard of staying overnight at the ER from dinner-time till 10am for food poisoning. It seemed odd, but what was I going to say other than I hope you feel better soon, and next time, please have your husband or son call to let us know that you will not be coming to work.  I was suspicious of Sheila’s story, but my husband convinced me to give her the benefit of the doubt since I had yet to find any good live-in nanny prospects.

Sheila continued to push the boundaries. She called in sick again (no hospital this time) and explained that she had a bug. Again, her speech was very slow and her words were slurred. Over the last ten years, I’ve never had an employee call in sick to work and sound this way – something wasn’t right but I still hadn’t found a new nanny.

This time we went from Strike 1 to Strike 3 in one fell sweep. Sheila came to work one morning and was really out of it. Her eyes were at half mast and her words were running together. My girls asked me what was wrong with her. That was it – she was done. My intuition was right and Sheila clearly had some sort of drug or alcohol problem. I did my best to keep my kids away from her and whisked them and our dog out of the house. From the car I called my husband. Someone else had to pick up the girls that afternoon – there was no way I wanted her driving them, not in any car, and not in ours.

My husband called Sheila to see if he could find out what was going on. She claimed to be fine. Balancing work and home got dicey since we both had meetings and deadlines that at the time, we felt couldn’t be missed. My husband called Sheila’s husband to learn more, and he offered to pick up our kids from school and help take care of them for the day. (He was a temporarily unemployed school teacher who we had spent some time with him, so we made an exception). Ugh – what a mess. My husband went home early and let Sheila go. She was very angry and upset. Although she was still out of it and slurring her words, she thought that we were being unfair. It was a sad state of affairs, but we needed to do what was best for our family.

Unfortunately, letting Sheila go wasn’t the end. Several days later we received a call from one of our credit cards to asking us to verify atypical charges. Turns out Sheila used our credit card to pay some of her bills, buy tickets for her family to the circus, and make a couple thousand dollars of other purchases. Since she wouldn’t return our calls, we ended up reporting her to the police at which time we discovered that she had a narcotic problem and a criminal record five feet long!

In retrospect, I realize I should have had the difficult conversation with Sheila as soon as I was unhappy with how she was managing my children with her own. Perhaps I would have ended up letting her go sooner and been stuck with no help again, but I certainly wouldn’t have had to be concerned about my girls’ well-being. Balancing the demands of work and family will always have its challenges, but I’ve learned I need to take care of my family first, or I won’t have the mental capacity for much of anything else.  Stay tuned for Chapter 4 of Nanny Nightmares…

When Will I Ever Learn?

With no nanny, I was in a bind. The first week after the nanny (Danielle) left, my friends with kids, friends without kids, and moms I had just met all pitched in to help care for our girls during the work day. I’d leave work at lunch time to shuttle the girls from one “play date” to another, and my husband would cut out of work a bit early to pick them up. We found a substitute teacher who took care of the girls for a week. The following week, my mom made the 3-hour drive to help out.

Meanwhile, I continued to look for a permanent nanny.  After a failure with Danielle, my confidence in hiring was shaken. I needed someone who could help to fill my shoes while I was at work, who shared our family’s values, and who would genuinely love our kids and not just view being a nanny as a job.

I received several calls from a woman named Sheila who wanted a live-out nanny position. Since there is a significant difference in cost for a “live-in” versus “live-out” nanny, I didn’t follow up with her immediately. I interviewed several other people:

• a dentist from Columbia who wanted to be paid $1000/week and would work for a year while she finished an additional degree (way too pricey, not committed
• a super high energy woman who didn’t stop talking and was too immediately cuddly with my girls, who said it was fine to live with us during the week and go home to her husband an hour away on weekends (too intense, wouldn’t last)
• a young girl finishing her college education who was super quiet, who seemed to be looking for a way to move out of her parents’ house
• a woman with a 14 month old child who she’d bring to work which could be okay but she spent most of the interview chasing her child versus interacting with mine or talking to me.

 After these interviews, I interviewed Sheila who looked pretty good in comparison.

Sheila was married with four kids ages 5 to 11. She told me that all her kids would be in school full-time and busy with activities afterwards. She was ready to go back to work as a nanny and had a car to use on the job. There was a lot about Sheila that seemed great, but I hesitated in hiring her. Sheila’s only reference was from a friend for whom she had babysat regularly because Sheila had been taking care of her own four children. The nature of this reference should have made me pause, but desperation clouded my vision. I told Sheila that she could have the job temporarily while I continued to look for a “live-in” nanny if she was interested. She was eager to begin and told me that she hoped I’d change my mind and hire her permanently. I was open and honest with her but gave her no guarantees.

The kids liked Sheila and she didn’t let them get away with murder. Sheila could cook and my husband was thrilled! At the end of the first week, I came home to find Sheila, my two girls, and two of her children. Hmm, they were all having fun. It did seem a bit odd that she wouldn’t have mentioned that she’d be taking care of her kids as well as my mine. Before I knew it, my girls were on her children’s schedule. Her kids were at our house as frequently as Sheila took care my girls to her own. My girls were missing naps and getting grumpy. Was I paying Sheila to take care of both my kids and her own?

School started and I was able to avoid having the tough discussion of needing more boundaries because Sheila’s children were to be in school all day and staying after for activities. When someone takes care of my children, I find it very difficult to “manage” them because I feel like they can hold me “hostage” since they have my children all day. I couldn’t believe that things were getting so complicated with Sheila and that she had only worked for us for one week! If I had only realized that this was just the beginning… Stay tuned for Chapter 3 of Nanny Nightmares.

Enjoy your long weekend and look for Chapter 2 of Nanny Nightmares on Monday. The only thing I’m going to tell you about my next blog is that it is the second chapter of seven through which I will cover drug addicts and lost twenty-somethings.

I’m going away tomorrow afternoon for our annual family gathering for the 4^th of July holiday. Under one roof, we will have seven children ages 2-7, and nine children ages 37 through 72. I can’t wait for the ruckus to begin J.

Have a wonderful 4^th of July and remember that although our country is far from perfect, we have freedoms that many others around the world cannot even begin to imagine.

We had wonderful nannies for our girls over the last 5+ years. Three nannies in 5 years and one who stayed with us for three – not a bad batting average. And why not? I ran my own business and had plenty of experience in hiring people over the last eight years.

August 2007 – nanny nightmares begin. 10 different people over three months. My confidence in my ability to hire was shattered. Not only did our nanny troubles stress out my whole family, it was an omnipresent distraction. These three months seem vaguely humorous when looking back, but still beg the question as to whether or not I had my priorities straight, as you will see in the ensuing chapters.

Chapter 1: Danielle

Our first hire last August was Danielle. She wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but seemed nice enough. Her references were only okay. But my husband and I logically discussed the pros and cons of Danielle versus other candidates, and realizing that we were desperate, Danielle got the job.

My first mistake – I didn’t listen to my gut and hired Danielle anyway. What I learned over the next two weeks is that she was a push-over and lacked good judgment. She drove around with my youngest daughter improperly buckled into her car seat for several days. Of the 3-point buckle, only the plastic piece across her chest was closed. How did I learn about this? My children told me! When I told Danielle what the girls said and asked her about the seatbelt, she denied it. Later that evening, I decided to see for myself. I put my youngest in her car seat to discover that only the plastic top buckle would close. The strap had been pulled so tight that the buckle portion, which is the true anchor, would not close. I fixed the seat belt and took note of Danielle’s lie and lack of good judgment. Strike1.

My oldest daughter came home from the local lake/beach one day wearing platform flip-flops about 4 sizes too big for her. Danielle explained that she had gone out of the house without shoes and so they had taken these from the lost & found. How do you not notice a child leaving the house for the day barefoot? How can it be right to take something that is not yours? Still desperate with no other nanny prospects, I kept Danielle on but started looking again in earnest. Strike 2.

My girls’ behavior was getting brattier by the day. Clearly they had no boundaries and were calling the shots with Danielle. I learned that Danielle had given the girls peanut butter and mint jelly for lunch. (Mint jelly… isn’t that only used in recipes? What kind of lunch is that?) I casually asked Danielle not to give them mint jelly again while we were preparing dinner – she replied that the girls had asked for it so she figured it was okay. So, if they ask for chocolate ice cream for lunch tomorrow, would that be okay? Strike 3. Since when do three and four-year old kids know what’s best for them? Stay tuned for Chapter 2 of Nanny Nightmares…