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Win $20 cash. New users welcome. Free membership with discount code “vipfree”. Until Sunday 5:00 pm eastern whatever teacher uploads the most lessons to their teacher store will win $20 cash!! Lessontrader.com is a virtual marketplace for teacher users to buy and sell resources with teacher sellers making 100% profit off anything they sell.
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We had 6 au pairs. They joined for dinners when we had them but they also cooked meals for our kids at night which made evenings less stressful.
😂 I would welcome that much help at once but we wouldn’t have enough bedrooms. 6 au pairs over 6 years. 3 kids.
I’m a partner; wife is C-suite for a F500 FS firm.
When my wife went back to work after a year, we hired a nanny / “house manager” who does not live with us. We paid salary and benefits so we wouldn’t have to count hours; she typically was with us 45-50 hours per week. In addition to taking care of our kids, she ran errands, did all of the grocery shopping, kids laundry, and light housekeeping. We wouldn’t have been able to make it work without her. It took a lot of organization and hiring the right person.
Kids are now in school full-time, and our nanny / house manager is still salaried but works around 6 hours per day; does all of the non-kid stuff, picks them up from school; takes them to activities and usually starts dinner.
Very helpful, thanks
Enthusiast
Nanny
Flexible. My office is 10mins drive from my place but I can also work from home.
A mix of family (grandparents) and supplemental daycare the first two years, then daycare/tot pre-school once potty trained.
Same as MD1. Daycare and grandparents.
I will add we were going to do nanny but changed our minds last minute. Daycare was a great choice for us and the kids.
Live-in nanny who typically works 7am-6pm (or 7pm on evenings my spouse and/or I are running late from work). Nanny cooks, does the laundry, and cleans for us. We pay her very nicely and treat her like she’s part of our family (she likes to do her own thing though so often just goes to her room at night and watches tv or meets up with a friend after work for a bit). We had a live-out nanny previously but shifted to live-in when we had a second kid and while my spouse is finishing up a more intense period of her physician residency program. Will likely shift back to live-out when she’s done and has more stable hours. My wife and I are both home (almost) every night to do bath and bed time with our kids but the confidence our nanny will never be running late in the morning (when we have much less flexibility) and doesn’t need to rush out to commute home in the evenings is huge for us.
Full time daycare for the 3 year old; school plus lots of post-school activities for the 7 year old. Part-time house manager/nanny who works 25 hours a week (2Pm-7Pm) and can do the pickups and shuttling. She does light household work (laundry folding; some meal prep) from 2-4PM. And then gets the kids, etc. until about 6:30Pm.
In addition, we have a weekly maid service. And someone who comes and cooks a bunch of dishes every two weeks.
Afternoon nanny is a unicorn. Most want full time hours. You are lucky. I spent a year patching together college kids to do the afterschool hours. It was awful
RAISE YOUR OWN KIDS. Nothing you do at work can ever replace the time you will have lost.
🙄 Having help doesn’t mean people aren’t raising their kids.
Live out nanny ~50hrs a week 7am-530pm. Grandparent does Friday afternoon so nanny can leave early one day. Weekend sitter for 6hr on Saturday. Grandparent #2 on Sunday morning.
My husband and I both work and travel (1-2 nights at a time mostly). We work from home when not on a trip.
Had this model since second kid was born, they were about 2.5 years apart. Daycare would not have worked because our son was constantly sick from just his part time preschool. We could not miss work every time he couldn’t go.
Both are now 6 and 3. Son in private school kindergarten $30k per year, daughter in part time preschool (still inexpensive $8k). Nanny $70k a year including OT, but not bonus or PTO. Cost a fortune.
When my daughter is 6, we will switch to an au pair. We’ll have two tuitions, but it will still be less than what we have now.
I’m not opposed to live in as long as you have the space and privacy. My dad is a live in grandparent.
And if you do have someone living in, do they join you for dinner every night?
Think hard about why you want a live-in nanny. Is it for flexibility? There are live-out Nannys who are happy to be super flexible.
Do you need a lot of hours? It’s better value to have two care givers and capping each below 40 hours so you’re not hitting 1.5X overtime.
Are you expecting them to help with overnight crying? That’s not a norm, that’s a night nurse/ baby nurse job.
We had live in Au pairs and then a live-in nanny for about 3 years. When we moved our much-loved nanny to a live-out model, my husband and I danced around the apartment. She was a super cool, lovely and private person - we were just SO happy to have our privacy back. Freedom to talk about what ever we want, wherever we want. Freedom to wear what we want day and night. Freedom to cry when we needed to without having to put on employer-face.
I’m someone who never minded the privacy aspect of live-in but was SOARINGLY happy to have my own family-only home back.
Nanny - never a live in.
We did daycare. Luckily it was at my wife’s workplace. It worked for us and our kids are successful in their 20s. No way I would have wanted someone in an our house for that amount of time.
When our first was little we had a full time nanny (40 hours) plus a live in Au Pair (up to 45 hrs, never used more than 30) which gave us flexibility for evening weeknight work and weekend dates after bedtime.
Then we had a live in nanny for a year (Covid).
Then we had two 35-hr Nannys for a year, one day on, one day off rotation.
Now we have a 49hrs per week nanny and a 10-hrs weekend babysitter. We would love to get the weekday hours down but kids are in school with slightly different hours from each other and need a lot of ferrying between activities.
Maybe next year we’ll get down to a 25-hr nanny and keep the 10hr weekend babysitter. Although, unlikely because schools have a full 5-day work week far less than one might expect, as you’ll discover 🫣
With our first, we did a nanny share until he went to day care at 18 months. When the second showed up and I went back to work we switched to au pairs and never looked back. Both kids also did day care. We had enough space that we weren’t on top of each other and the au pairs never just hung about if they were not working. My husband works full time but doesn’t travel. I was pretty much 3-4 days on the road when staffed. Kids are in college now and seem to have survived. The au pair agency actually sent them both a survey about their experiences this past year and they both said it was good. The flexibility, household help and dinner prep were huge for us
We have 2 in daycare. I really didn’t want to manage another employee at home and we’re able to make it for pickup on time.
Single mom partner with light travel schedule. Nanny was live out but 730-730 and avail for one off overnights as needed. Cost. A. Fortune.
Now that daughter is school age we have Au pair. Terrific flexibility and cost effective. But not enough hours coverage before kid is in school.
My house small but Au pair works for us. They spend a lot of time in own room or out so doesn’t feel very invasive.
Oh and when kid goes to preschool it’s hard to flex down the nanny hours so add preschool tuition on top of this…..
We are in public school now….and I have a new kitchen with my winnings :)
No judgement on people who get help from external sources but We’ve been seriously considering giving it up, so we can stay home and be there for the kiddos. I’m not sure what we get out of a “high powered” job at the expense of the kiddo’s future. I ask myself - if my kiddo will look at me 20 years from now and appreciate the fact that I/we were around vs. being raised by a nanny / au pair.
Did I misunderstand, though? That’s not staying home.
2 live-in Nanny’s (also did housework)
Kids are a bit older now - so down to 1 Nanny
Wife is a surgeon - and I travel most weeks for 1-2 nights a week