<p>I remember having jury duty and being very uncomfortable and slightly alarmed that some of the other prospective jurors weren’t comfortable with their childcare arrangements. I can’t remember whether they were selected and am hoping they were excused or deferred until they could make better arrangements.</p>
<p>I know I was able to get excused from jury duty when I was a nursing mom and sole caregiver of our kids. I did serve as a juror later, even though I had practiced as a trial attorney–was surprised the attorneys didn’t want me off the jury.</p>
<p>It must be very challenging having to leave a baby or young child with someone or a situation you’re not comfortable with. We rarely went out before our kids were both in grade school because we just wanted to be with them rather then entrust them to others. We feel fortunate we had that option. We took them traveling with us as well.</p>
<p>It is very hard for folks to find child care, especially when the child is sick. Our local children’s hospital started offering care for children who had a cold at a fee, but I never followed up to find out if it’s still offered. It was NOT cheap, but at least it was an option so the parent could work and not lose his/her job.</p>
<p>We once had a problem–we let one of the adult relatives play with my toddlers outside my dad’s house, right next to the swimming pool. The next thing we heard was dad’s shout, “Hey, who is watching those kids?” The adult relative replied, “Not me, I’m done with them.” Needless to say, that relative was never asked to watch the kids. It freaks me out when people are not attentive to children near bodies of water–too much potential for tragedy.</p>
<p>When my D was little, and until she turned 3, I became a nanny, with her in tow! I worked for two wonderful families during that time, one child at a time. And I was lucky, my mom & grandmother were both still alive, and lived super close. When D was 3 she asked to go to school at our synagogue (she adored the teacher and the classrooms!) so I put her in school and went back to work part time, which I worked until she was in 1st grade, then went to the Y for their after school program, otherwise I never hired a sitter. </p>
<p>I was a great nanny. Museums, library reading hours, baby beach trips, the park every single day unless it was raining, real food to eat, lots of cuddles, music galore and zero TV. I had as much fun as the kids. One of my “kids” (a sweet boy) took his moms keys one Saturday and she asked him where he was heading (he was 2) and he said “let’s go to my other mom!” </p>
<p>Some of the stories here make me laugh and some make me cringe.</p>
<p>My former (skinny, with a boob job) nanny OD’d on pain pills while her co-nanny and her charges were in another room in her house. At that point my son, was no longer in her care. He had been there since he was about 8 months old (my previous nanny, a cousin, had called me one day and said she had to get a “real job” because her husband refused to work). Now that my son is older (he was there from 8 mos - 5 years) he occasionally comes out with stories. Physically forced to eat foods he did not want to eat (for years I packed his lunches and then she insisted all the kids eat food she provided), encouraged to have physical fights with other boys at the same sitter to resolve issues. The sitter would call him a baby and a little girl if he cried. God only knows what else. </p>
<p>On the other hand, my oldest DD has worked as a Nanny for a couple of families. Her first family was a “live in” position for the summer. The parents owned a very busy resort so my DD was pretty much on call 24/7 with uncertain days of the week off. The father smoked pot heavily in their garage, there was rarely food in the house that the little girl would eat (she had a pretty limited list of things she would eat), my DD was not ever reimbursed (as agreed upon) for expenditures she made when taking the little girl out (ice cream, pizza, gas money for DD’s car, mini golf etc - all things the parents asked DD to take the girl to). Toward the end, the father was just paying my DD whatever cash he had in his wallet at the time and saying he would make it up next payday. I don’t think she ever did get what she had coming to her.</p>
<p>Her next job was not live in and was a lot better. For the most part they treated her really well. However, she did become a sound board for all of the mother’s marital issues. The father wanted the mother to become a stay at home Mom so my DD was let go. The mother actually cried when she fired DD and wrote her a beautiful reference.</p>
<p>Now DD is working as a PreSchool Teacher in a very low income area (waiting a year before Grad School). That is a whole other ball of wax!</p>
<p>The nanny that we loved the best told us a story about how she and her best friend decided to become nannies. They grew up in a very rural area in the midwest and didn’t want to spend another boring summer at home. Her friend accepted a job from a wealthy family in Ct. The mother didn’t work, but she did get her nails done and other spa treatments…she was being paid double what we paid our girl , but she was expected to make all of the meals, do all of the housecleaning and entire family’s laundry…so basically she was the nanny and maid. And she was not welcome to join in family activities, which from what she said, weren’t a big part of their life.</p>
<p>Our nanny was not making tons of money , but she was treated as part of the family and included in everything and also had the opportunity to take on another part time job while she lived with us, so in the long run she made good money , had a lot of fun and truly became part of our family.</p>
<p>When Hurricane Sandy hit , her little girl told her friends in pre-school that her " NJ family was hurt from the storm " She was quite the show and tell star , so we were told :)</p>
<p>We had one wonderful, marvelous, fabulous nanny for six years – we’re still in touch, and S1 stayed with her a week when he traveled to her country. We took her with us to Disneyland several times when we’d visit my sister in SoCal. Thankfully, she would accompany my kids on the roller coasters, which I wasn’t about to do.</p>
<p>We have been lucky. We have had the same person (live-in due to H’s erratic schedule) since my kids were a year old, and now they are 20. Her role has transitioned over the years to a housekeeper; think Alice from the Brady Bunch.</p>
<p>Nanny stories. We had some silly situations that fortunately resolved very quickly - one nanny who forgot to pick up my older son from school and then blamed it on the car not starting (we lived a 5 minute walk from school, not to mention the car did work plus we had two cars), the nanny who drove into the car parked in front of her and then claimed that the other car had backed up into her (that seemed plausible until my then 3 yr old son said “But Mommy there was no one driving the car in front of us”). The night I came home to find the nanny having a beer while my younger son ate dinner. Finally we hired a wonderful Irish nanny who lived out and stayed with us long term.</p>
<p>I know a lot of people have had good luck with au pairs, but personally having to “break-in” a new person every year would be a deal breaker for me. That just seems to contradict the whole point of having help, which is to make your life easier!! I absolutely could not have done my job, or H do his, without live-in child care.</p>
<p>I had an absolutely horrible babysitter when I was a kid. The normal one was great and I still see her occasionally but one summer they decided to give her a break and we would have this other girl a few days a week. She was awful.</p>
<p>She would make me sit in the dark attic if I didn’t finish my lunch while she went and played with my little sister. I remember I threw up one day and she wanted me to eat it. I never said anything about this stuff because she was the daughter of a family friend.</p>
<p>Then one day, she “borrowed” my wallet with my money in it to go to the store and “buy me a present”. Needless to say, I didn’t give her my wallet. I was supposed to go away with my parents and I didn’t have it. Then I remembered she was playing with it and I said I think she has it. We marched to their house and her mom found it in her room and the above was her excuse. </p>
<p>Needless to say, she didn’t babysit us ever again after that. After the wallet incident I told them she was rude and didn’t treat us well at all… and that no, I did not loan her my wallet for her to go buy me something! If I wanted to buy something I would have had someone take me! Kids love buying stuff with their own money!</p>
<p>My daughter’s elbow was dislocated - nanny blamed it on her getting it stuck in the crib rails. Fast forward 2 days later, nanny came tearfully to the door with her boyfriend - she felt so guilty and had to confess that she caused it - my willful daughter wouldn’t cooperate getting her shirt put on. Scared the crap out of what was the most wonderful nanny we had. </p>
<p>Bad nanny story - got a call from another nanny who was acqaintances with our new nanny (not the one above but a later one) to tell me about physical/mental abuse she was handing out to my kids, in public and telling the others about what she’d done at my house. Never had my blood run so cold as hearing that. Of course, fired her, got all sorts of explanations (“that girl just says bad things about me because she wants my job”) and had to shove her out the door and change the locks. Lovely. But during her short employ with us, she took a whole bunch of pics of my kids in various poses around the house and in retrospect, you can see in their eyes that something wasn’t right. Learned to trust my instincts.</p>
<p>I opened the drawer next to the bed. Opened the box I kept my watch in and it was gone. The only person who’d been in our house was the babysitter. We really liked her. </p>
<p>I called her mother.</p>
<p>Her mother called me in tears. Her daughter had confessed to stealing the watch and other things. She brought over a shopping bag. My wife was pregnant and hadn’t noticed things missing. Small pieces of jewelry. Shoes. None of that amounted to much, but the watch was a felony offense. She’d taken it to give to her boyfriend for high school graduation.</p>
<p>I have no idea what happened to her. I didn’t call the police.</p>
<p>My first caretaker was wonderful and my D loved her. Once we went to Europe on vacation. My 2 year old D didn’t adjust back to US time immediately. She awakened me in the middle of the night, demanding that I get dressed and go to work IMMEDIATELY. I pulled up the shades and pointed out that it was pitch dark outside and not time to go to work yet. I had to wait until it was morning. She started sobbing hysterically ,“But if you don’t get dressed and go to work [our sitter] won’t come!” It made me a bit wistful that she wanted to get rid of me, but it also made me realize just how much she wanted to see our babysitter after 2 weeks away from her. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, our sitter got sick and had to quit. She had it planned out. She gave us no notice but said her own D could take over for us. That way, her D would have a good job and she could see our offspring whenever she wanted. We tried the D for a week. She was terrible…not mean and nasty…just dumb. We had to fire her, which was heartbreaking. We knew it would sever the connection to her mom who would be furious with us.</p>
<p>We had some not so great sitters after that. However, nobody hurt the kids or stole anything major. One good thing about my neighborhood is that people did tell parents if anything bad was going on. The most famous case involved one of our doormen. He asked one couple if he could talk to them when he got off work. Puzzled, they agreed. He told them their sitter was leaving their 2 year old alone in their apartment several times a week while she was doing the laundry in the basement laundry room in our building. He had seen her in the laundry room on the security camera at the front desk without their child. When confronted the sitter said she only did it when he was taking his nap. Yep, leaving a 2 year old alone in an apartment for a couple of hours --a 2 year old who easily climbed out of his crib!</p>
<p>I was on vacation when this thread started, which is how I missed it. I could write a book (perhaps opposite of Nanny Diaries) on the 2-3 doozies we had in the 11 years of live-in childcare. </p>
<p>Nanny #3 - took S1 to bus stop (when he was 2) in pajamas and no shoes when it was in the 40s. Asked legally-blind neighbor to watch him in the baby pool while she ran an errand for me. (complete lie, neighbor refused, so she didn’t go). Met some guys on the internet that she invited to come to our house for Thanksgiving, as she expected we would be out of town. We fired her in early November and stuck around that Thanksgiving in case some guys came to our door. She also had a horrible sense of direction and nearly ran out of gas in a very bad section of Newark and had no money with her, having taken a wrong turn after dropping a kid off at a summer program. I think a stranger took pity on her and gave her a few $ for gas. </p>
<p>Au Pair #3 (we had 3 in 18 months) - totaled the car and said it was the car’s fault. She was from Germany and yelled at the kids (then 15 & 11) in front of me. Wouldn’t unload dishwasher or do anything she was asked. Agency actually refunded me the annual fee, as she was even belligerent to the counselor and didn’t grasp that we wanted her out of our house immediately. </p>
<p>That said, we had several lovely LDS nannies (#3 was LDS, so not a 100% guarantee) from Utah, who we remain in contact with. It’s fun to see the pictures of their kids on Facebook. All stayed at least a year, one was with us nearly 3. It really wasn’t that big of a deal ‘breaking them in’, as we had very detailed instructions and the ones that stuck around were smart and adapted quickly. The toughest part was them learning their way around this area, which is far different than the gridded streets of Utah.</p>
<p>One of my friends had an awful story. She and her husband went on cruise for a week and a high school girl from our church, whose parents we knew well, agreed to babysit. Within a day of two of returning, my friend’s septic tank backed up, flooding the main floor of her home. Upon investigation, it was determined to have been caused by dozens of condoms clogging the line.</p>