OurGreatCity.com has chosen Nannies on the Go as Southlake’s Business of the Month for March 2010!  This is a great accomplishment for Nannies on the Go and we are greatful to Our Great City for choosing Nannies on the Go to represent Southlake, TX!!

Nannies on the Go provides solutions quickly… that is our commitment at Nannies On The Go to the multitude of families we serve.  We know how very busy life is for our families and we also know that selective families need safe, qualified childcare with nurturing providers. We secure the highest quality of applicants in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex and take pleasure in providing a unique sevice to all families.

Addtionally, we would like to thank Skipping Stone Studio for taking the professional photos of our team and our families and nannies!

For more information about our services, please visit Nannies on the Go.

Sitter Soiree at Baby Bliss in Soutlake

Our Sitter Soiree held at Baby Bliss in Southlake was a huge success!  Thank you to all who came to meet our wonderful group of nannies.

A Sitter Soiree is an event where a parent and several candidates can meet in a relaxed, comfortable environment and conduct impromptu interviews face to face. The Sitter Soiree offers a detailed book for each parent to use as a guide in the process of finding the perfect nanny or sitter.

Sitter Soiree at Baby Bliss- Feb. 23

Nannies on the Go was founded in 2005 and has experienced an influx of calls over the past two years due to mothers returning to the workplace. For this reason, Nannies on the Go has launched The Sitter Soiree event in an effort to help all families, with varying incomes, find the perfect match for their family needs.

For more information or to register for a Sitter Soiree, please visit http://www.nanniesonthego.net/ or call 817-442-0225.

Please meet the people who make Nannies on the Go possible:

Pictured from left to right: Jennifer, Sharon (owner) and Krissy

It’s a fact. Employees with children miss work.

One study by Bright Horizons Child Care Trends (2002) shows that among parents, 45% miss at least one day of work every six months due to child care issues, and 65% are late to work or leave work early due to childcare issues an average of 7.5 times in six months. Other studies show that working parents with day care and elementary school children miss up to 13 days per year because of breakdowns in childcare arrangements.

What’s more, today’s global economy finds families moving from city to city without immediate resources or family within their new communities. When both parents work, little time is left for researching childcare services and finding good tutors.

At Nannies On the Go and Tutors on the Go, locally owned and operated by Purple Palm Marketing, we can help your employees’ secure trustworthy, reliable childcare and back-up care so that they are more productive employees for you. By working with us, you can offer valuable employees one more benefit that can translate to fewer absences and increased loyalty, plus drive down the cost of absenteeism and turnover.

Our Nannies on the Go services can help when employees are challenged by:

1. Relocating to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and need help securing reliable child care
2. Failing child care arrangements and would prefer in-home care
3. A regular caregiver who is ill or on vacation
4. An ill child who requires care at home
5. A school or childcare center that is closed for holidays

Our placement services offer top-notch, reliable providers dedicated to meeting individual family needs. We conduct detailed background checks and interviews with each candidate, acquiring only the best in the care-giving and tutorial fields.

To learn more about what we can do for your business, please call us at 817-442-0225 or visit our website.

Being a nanny is a career choice created in a grey zone.

There are as many different childcare positions as there are childcare workers. Roles (and rates of pay) can range from, first time supervised babysitter to Executive Nanny. Titles that get thrown about with abandon can also include Mother’s Helper, Au Pair, Nursery/Maternity Nurse, Nanny, Night Nanny, Child minder, Nanny/Personal Assistant, or Nanny/Housekeeper and on and on and on. In North America we seem to flail about defining and redefining the job as each interview presents itself. How confusing!!

So without further adieu lets have a long hard look at what is expected of a “Nanny” and in turn …what a nanny expects!

What is a nanny (usually) responsible for?
1) First and foremost the safety, care and well being of your children.
2) That the house is as clean when she leaves as when she arrived. (This means if you had a huge dinner party and there are mountains of dishes all over…those dishes are not her responsibility. It also means it should not take to two hours to clean up the toys and playdough after she has gone)
Then if time permits… she is responsible for;
3)Children’s Laundry
4) Children’s rooms/tidy/organized/notes left if things are running low
5)Children’s snacks and meals. (Possibly cooking and freezing/labeling baby food)
6)Maintenance, cleaning & care of children’s belongings (highchair, crib, toys, stroller etc.)

* This type of contract would be said to include “only childcare related duties.”

What is generally considered “Light Housekeeping?”
1)Unloading/Loading the dishwasher
2)Occasional family laundry, including folding & putting away.
3)General tidying/straightening
4)Sweeping/light mopping/wiping of kitchen
5)Taking out Garbage/Recycling
6)Refilling water coolers, sugar/salt containers, etc.

What is definitely EXTRA?
1)Vacuuming
2)Dusting
3)Meal Prep for family
4) Errands (mail, groceries, picking up dry cleaning, etc)
5)Ironing
6) Any additional specific tasks (ie; wiping down cupboards, sorting closets etc)

What is usually considered completely off limits?
1)Bathrooms
2)Washing the car
3)Heavy duty cleaning (the oven, inside the fridge, flipping mattresses etc.)

What Every Nanny Wants

A Nanny/Family relationship is intimate and always evolving…it is of utmost importance no matter how close you become with your nanny to always remember that this is her JOB, and to respect that fact.

Nannies also cite families who respect them personally and appreciate the work they do, as being desirable employers. Keep in mind that you should not only respect the nanny, and the job, but also the written contract that has been negotiated. Families who continually to add more and more jobs onto an already negotiated contract are likely to find themselves out a nanny…and quickly. This is one of the most common reasons nannies give for quitting or choosing not to renegotiate a contract with a family.

PAY RATES

Live out nannies can make anywhere from $10-$35 an hour….seriously. This is a pretty broad range.
What factors affect how much a nanny should make?
Have a look at the following variables;
1) How many children?
2) Ages of the children?
3)How much experience/training/education the nanny has.
4) Does the nanny drive?
5)Availability/Flexibility
6) Additional Tasks (see list at top)
7) Type of contract…Part Time/Full Time/Nanny Share …Independant contractor or Employee?
8)How badly the family wants that particular nanny.
9)Where you live
10) Are there any extra perks/bonuses being offered (use of a car, a trip home paid for, paid vacation with the family)

*To read more, please click here.

THE mother was annoyed with her nanny, and she went on the Web to vent. The nanny had fed the children a casserole that the mother had intended to serve for dinner. “Now I have to come up with something else,” she wrote on a popular site for mothers, exasperation radiating from the computer screen.

She might have been looking for sympathy, but she didn’t get much. Responses from other mothers to her query about whether they, too, would be irritated ranged from “If you didn’t tell her it was supposed to be for dinner, there’s no grounds for being annoyed” to “You’re a loon.”

But one really got to the heart of the matter: “A lot of you nanny employers are really bad at employer-employee communications.”

It’s true. Pop culture — stoked by the movie and the best-selling novel “The Nanny Diaries” and now by the newly published sequel, “Nanny Returns” — tends to paint mothers who employ nannies as over-entitled she-devils who pepper their hapless employees with unreasonable orders and micromanage them to the brink of nervous breakdowns. But the reality is different and more curious.

Many mothers who employ nannies are actually overstretched working women, a number of whom (contrary to their professional personas) suffer from an inability to clearly express their expectations and demands to the people they pay to care for their children. The result is a peculiar passive-aggressive form of communication, a less-than-ideal dynamic between worker and boss.

The mother, at times beset by guilt, a touch of intimidation or feelings of her own maternal inadequacy, fails to articulate what she wants from the nanny — and then complains to friends, her spouse or an Internet message board when she doesn’t get it. (The father in many cases steers clear of the whole relationship.)

Lisa Spiegel, a director of Soho Parenting, a family counseling center in Manhattan that tends to cater to urban professionals, witnesses such communication issues all the time. “I’ve seen C.E.O.’s, heads of companies, professors,” she said. “These are women who are very successful in work relationships, but the idea of talking to their baby sitter about unloading the dishwasher will give them cramps for a week.”

Some nascent efforts are beginning to emerge to address this puzzling communication gap. One approach seeks to empower the nanny to take the initiative and draw out the mother on her needs and wants. “The communication needs to be there, and if it’s not being initiated by the parents, it has to be initiated by the nanny,” said Lora Brawley, who lives outside Seattle and is the president of the National Association for Nanny Care, a nonprofit educational organization that aims to promote excellence in nanny care.

A Family Member, Up to a Point

IT’S all about saying what you mean.

While some parents have no trouble telling the caretakers who look after their children what to do, many others find it difficult to act like a boss to someone who can sometimes seem more like a member of the family than an employee.

“We find written communication helps,” said Sheilagh Roth, the executive director of the English Nanny and Governess School outside Cleveland, which has been in business for 25 years.

That can mean leaving a list of tasks for the day, but ideally it means drafting a written contract — or at least a detailed job description — explicitly stating the duties of the position, as well as the family’s obligations regarding vacation time, overtime, holidays and other basic matters that an employee needs to know. Ms. Roth requires a written contract when she places nannies with families.

Both she and Lisa Spiegel, a director of Soho Parenting, a family counseling center in Manhattan, advise scheduling weekly meetings between mother (or father) and nanny. They should be casual — just a chance to exchange observations and suggestions — but they should be at the same time every week so that each party knows to expect them. That way, no one has to stew about whether and when to bring up a touchy issue, because it can always be raised at the weekly session.

Ms. Spiegel said that it’s important for families to remember that their nanny is an employee and not a family member, no matter how much they love the person.

Click Here to read more.

Don’t forget to register for our Sitter Soiree!

Nannies on the Go has launched The Sitter Soiree event in an effort to help all families, with varying incomes, find the perfect match for their family needs.

A Sitter Soiree is a program where parents and sitters meet with each other in a relaxed and comfortable environment. Each Sitter Soiree begins with the pre-screened, qualified sitters from our registry introducing themselves and describing their experience and availability. These are professional Nannies or sitters that have passed our thorough interview process and are available as after school Nannies, Summer Nannies, temporary sitters or simply part time Nannies.

The parents can then spend time interviewing the 10+ potential candidates. The sitters and parents will have a chance to mingle over light snacks and beverages. At the end of the Soiree, the family will receive a book with contact information, profiles, photo, and references of all the sitters.

Admission is limited so the family has greater accessibility to the candidates. Connect with a network of sitters now!

Go to the Nannies on the Go website for more information and for registration!

A third stroller has been recalled for problems with the hinges after a child suffered a broken finger when he caught it in the stroller’s hinge mechanism. This recall involves 1,200 Ruby, Onyx and Topaz models of Cybex umbrella strollers.

The Cybex strollers were sold at department and juvenile product stores nationwide between August 2009 and November 2009 for between $140 and $260. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is advising parents to stop using the recalled strollers and contact Regal Lager to receive a free hinge cover retrofit kit at (800) 593-5522 or by visiting the firm’s Web site. Consumers can also e-mail the firm at info@regallager.com.