Nanny share, how does it work? (sorry, know this will have been done before)

[DunDrumlin]

My neighbour is interested in doing a nanny share with me starting in the new year. I'll have a 15 mo DS and she'll have a 6 mo DS. We live in London. My DS is currently in nursery 4 dpw but I'm willing (quite keen actually) to split his week 2 days nursery, 2 days nanny. Roughly how much (a range) should I expect to pay GROSS for my portion of a nanny share? Do I pay on top for activities (presumably yes?). What about food (for baby / for nanny). It's my neighbour so I guess we'd split a day at our house and a day at hers, but not sure etc. Does anyone have any useful advice for this type of scenario? Also, what do you think about the age difference of the babies? Obviously in a year or so it will be virtually nothing, but at the moment it's quite a big gap......

Thanks in advance!!

When we did a nanny share we split the cost according to how many days childcare we got from the nanny. She was with me FT and the other mum worked 3 days, so I paid 5/8 and she paid 3/8. We did the kitty this way too, for food and activities.

Babies both at my house which suited us all. If you split houses you need extra cots, high chairs etc at both houses.

Remember holidays - you all need to take holidays at the same time, unless the parents get a lot more holiday than the nanny. Nanny picked 2 weeks, we picked one week each.

And what will you do when the other child is sick? Just get chickenpox too, or will the parent of the sick child take time off? This is the biggie, for me. One of the great advantages of a nanny is that you still get childcare when your child is sick.

That should get you started....

Don't think it's all problems! My DS1 is still astonishingly close to the child he shared a nanny with, even though the share only lasted for a year, and ended about 6 years ago. We've moved away, and see the other family about once a year now, but the boys greet each other like long lost friends every time.

Immediate thoughts - you'll need a double buggy and various other things doubled due to closeness in age so it's probably better to have it at one house (although nanny can always have keys to nip round to the other if you run out of pasta or something).

Probably agree a daily amount for the kitty. If they have scheduled activities then it's not too bad as you can work out how much you'd be spending. What can work well to mitigate the cost of hosting is that one family pays the food/bills increase and the other family agrees to take on the cost of a payroll company.

It depends on the nanny how much you can expect to pay gross but in London shares can go as high as £15gross/hour.

When you interview I think you need to be confident that the nanny will be able to handle the age difference. IMO that kind of age gap is tricky (Irish twins!) because one is just coming out of a stage as another enters it. It doesn't mean it doesn't work but nanny needs to be proactive and know how she would approach it. It can be very wearing because as they go through tricky periods and one starts just as the other stops it can feel like the phase has lasted twice as long!

So overall I'd say it's feasible!

Don't worrry about it having been done before - similar questions will have but rarely your specific situation and the MN knowledge bank is growing all the time....

One thing to take into consideration, the 15 month old is likely to only have 1 nap a day now, and the 6 month old 2 naps. Depending on the nap times you could find yourself in the situation of DC2 having a nap, waking up, then DC1 having a nap, waking up and then DC2 having another nap - and there goes your whole day! (Unless one of them sleeps in the pushchair).