nanny doing personal chores with toddler

[FarterChristmoose]

Is it acceptable for a nanny to take toddler with her on personal chores such as nannys doctors and dentist appointments, food shopping etc rather than doing these on nannys day off? She gets one weekday off Plus weekends. She takes toddler for daily walks, play groups etc.

[BoffinMum]

LaContessa, yes, you have a different arrangement there and if you are happy that is fine. The issue comes I think with people presenting themselves as highly qualified professional nannies, asking top dollar, and then not taking the job seriously enough.

[fidel1ne]

Fideline, I have actually heard of situations where nannies basically do just meet with their friends, do their own housework and chores and so on, plonking small charges in front of CBeebies in their own homes and then they bring them back and make out to the parents fun stuff has been happening when actually they have not been meeting their obligations and the child has not really been very well looked after in a holistic sense. So it needs an eye keeping on.

Gosh. 'Own home' and socialising generally are different to appointments and errands, though no?

[Anotherusername1]

Dentist is fine for check-ups etc, maybe not for a root canal or similar!

GP maybe depends on how personal the medical problems are but it might be that she has to see her own GP (my surgery insists on it) and her own GP only works on certain days so she can't go on her day off.

[DyslexicScientist]

I wouldn't like it, doctors are full if infectious sick people.

I had to watch my mum have her teeth drilled while she screamed away when I was younger so I wouldn't like that either. Its made me scared of dentists.

[bettyberry]

The dentist appointments wouldn't bother me as long as the nanny wasn't petrified of the dentist and teaching my DC to be scared too. The reason for the GP ones would though. I don't take my own DC when I have a smear test or anything related so I wouldn't take anyone else's. If it was just to collect a prescription, asthma check up or the like I wouldn't be at all bothered.

I don't think there is anything wrong with doing day to day job as a nanny as long as your main focus is still on the children you care for.

[RiverTam]

Since when does a trip to the supermarket take all morning?? Takes an hour and can be a fun/efucationsl experience for the child. Some crazy exaggerations going on here. And her day does sound intense - if the child isn't napping presumably she's working 11 hours a day with no break at all. Is that even legal?

As for comparing to when she has her own DC - they'll be her children! It's no comparison at all!!

[RiverTam]

Educational!

[BoffinMum]

I think the question here is how much of a priority the employer's children are to the nanny in working hours, perhaps.

[RattieOfCatan]

I'm a nanny, I see nothing wrong with doing occasional things during working hours. If I'm going to the shopping area with charge to get their groceries then I will pick up things that need picking up for my house too. I'm sure that my boss wouldn't mind me going to the doctor with charge if I had to as well. But it depends on whether it's occasional or not.

As long as it's not everyday, we all have personal errands and they don't all fit into days off. Most people with other jobs run errands on their breaks, given that we often don't have breaks (or breaks where we can leave the work premises) I don't see it as a huge issue.

Only one of my bosses has ever had an issue with it and, tbh, that was much more her own issue than mine, I wasn't 'allowed' to even buy a bottle of water for myself on "her time", even if I bought one for her child She got really annoyed with me once because I had to post an envelope into the bank, which was on the way to our activity for that day, and all I needed to do was take five steps into the bank, deposit the envelope into the letter box and take five steps back out. Madness.

[Lweji]

One hour a week in the supermarket should be fine. Nobody (except my exMIL) needs more than that (at worst 1.5 h), even for their monthly shopping. Unless they spend 5 min comparing products and prices every single time, even though they buy the same stuff every single time. (breathe)

If she went window shopping all morning, then she'd be taking the piss.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

I would think it depends on the balance - as Boffin seems to be saying.

If the nanny is spending the majority of her time interacting with/looking after/nurturing the child or children, with the occasional bit of shopping or unavoidable appointment, that would be fine with me.

But if the balance is skewed the other way, and too much of the nanny's time is spent on her stuff, with the child trailing along behind - that would seem wrong to me, and I would not be happy to pay for it.

[Viviennemary]

If it was only once or twice a year I think that would be fine. But the nanny is at work. She should really be doing this in her own time apart from hospital appointments. She certainly shouldn't be doing her own shopping while she is on a working day. I'd find somebody else if I was the employer. Arranging everything on her day off and she's exhausted. Isn't that what most people do.

[ChristmasHousewife]

I'm about to take on a nanny and I'm slightly conflicted. The shopping I'd encourage, I'm quite happy to recognise the value of that. Dentist I would be uncomfortable with, I'm a SAHM and don't take my children as I'm pretty much stuck in the chair, how can I care for them? I wouldn't be happy with paying someone to not be able to care for them! Same with GP, if there is a week day off there's no reason not to schedule routine appointments for that day, anything urgent I'd expect the nanny to be off sick so my children don't get it!

[DisappointedOne]

I've always taken DD to the dentist with me. She was perfectly happy to sit on my lap whilst I had a check up. We weren't in the room when DH had a wisdom tooth out, but making dentist visits completely normal and non-scary means she loves going now she's 5.

[BestZebbie]

Food shopping definitely OK because you can involve the toddler in what you are doing - not so keen on Dr and Dentist because won't she be occupied getting her check-up and the toddler will just have to sit at the side and be quiet throughout? She can't actually be supervising the child if she is having her teeth looked at. Also I don't think it would be appropriate for her to discuss her own medical issues in front of the child (and having eg: smear test with the child present even if behind a curtain would be a 'nope', I think!)

[LaContessaDiPlump]

Thanks Boffin. Our approach is pretty relaxed (as is that of our nanny) but I can see where annoyance would creep in if you were paying someone a lot of money to not do much with your child. I'm happy paying a little bit of money for her to do that but not lots

[ToElleWithIt]

We have a nanny and I'm okay with her doing the kind of errand that might ordinarily fit on a "lunch break" much the same as RattieofCatan suggests. She can't leave the house during her break so this seems reasonable to me. I wouldn't expect these things to be done at the expense of activities e.g. playgroup, but there's plenty of time in the day to fit in brief errands. It's really a question of judgement.

Popping to bank to lodge cheques / change money = fine
Going to bank for hour long mortgage application meeting = not so much
Picking up some groceries locally = fine
Long round trip to hypermarket for a huge shop = not so much
Posting parcels / brief dental check up / collecting prescription = all fine and the sort of thing a toddler finds interesting.

[whois]

Huge no to the nanny doing her personal food shop.

I would be OK about the occasional Dr or dentist trip as long as they weren't too frequent. Better to take along the child than take a half day and you have to sort out alternative child care?

[LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett]

I think ToElle has it spot on. There's a difference between wee errands that can be run on the way to and from activities and 'big jobs'.

But your friend needs to ask!

May I suggest though, she doesn't lead with how exhausting it is going to the dentist on her day off? Just a hunch, but that is not going to get her the outcome she wants

[DinosaursRoar]

how many appointments is she having that her day off is just rushing about? Are going to the doctors and dentists so exhausting?

It's one thing if you can't get an appointment on your day off asking for either the time off or taking the DC with you, but it's generally frowned upon to deliberately schedule appointments during working hours when you could just as easily have those appointments in non-work hours.

(Must say, as a SAHM to a non-napping toddler, if she's shattered with just 4 days a week of it without having to deal with night wakings, she's really in the wrong job, you might be better suggesting she goes to work for a nursery or gets out of childcare all together).

[DinosaursRoar]

oh and I would say if she does have to have appointments during work time, she should always offer the choice to the parents of her having the time off or taking the DC with her (assuming she's happy to take the DC with her!), some would prefer their children not to know about the nanny's medical issues or sit in the GPs waiting room and would rather do a work from home day and look after the DCs for an hour/ask a grandparent to cover when the nanny is out.

[mrtwitsglasseye]

I'd encourage it.

[Goingtobeawesome]

I was allowed to take my charge to a one off dentist appointment but would never have done my food shop with him. If I was shopping for the mother I may buy a couple of things for me but not a full on shop.

As long as the huge majority of the time was child focused the odd errand is fine.

[RattieOfCatan]

"if there is a week day off there's no reason not to schedule routine appointments for that day"

You say that but I had a series of blood tests that needed doing a couple of years ago and they had to have a few weeks between each one because my doctors surgery is shit.

I did three days a week of before and after school and three full days at the time, so easy, schedule the blood tests for the days where I'm doing before/after school, right? Nope. The clinics only ran on the two days where I had my two full weekdays. I had quite a few things like that happen! Bloody annoying. Now I work three full days a week and am able to swap my working days occasionally as my boss is a SAHM, so it's fine, but at the time I would have had to take days off for blood tests and other things.

I think taking a charge to the dentist would be preferable to the doctors, even beneficial really, despite the doctors being something that would be more urgent. More because children often only ever go to the dentist when they themselves need to have a check up and so I think that it would be good for a child to see that and experience it more often, especially little ones where the dentist isn't something they remember and it can become something quite scary. My charges went last week and the toddler didn't remember the last time she went and she was very uncertain about it, didn't really understand what was going to happen despite us talking her through it a few times, so maybe if she'd seen me or her Mum have an appointment she would have felt better about it, though it'd have to be with a child-friendly dentist who didn't mind the constant "Why you doing that?" or "What's that?"

[Stratter5]

7am to 8pm, 4x days a week and she's exhausted?

Good thing she's not a Junior Doctor then.