What happens to nanny arrangements when children reach school age?

[chisigirl]

just what it says in the thread title, really. A couple of friends in the same situation are thinking about this. What typically happens when children who are looked after by a nanny start full time school? Do nannies usually want to leave and work for families who have babies and toddlers? Do school age children with no young siblings go to CMs usually?

Does anyone have any arrangements that work out well? I'd prefer the DC to come home to their own house after school but would a nanny be bored by this set up (ie no children to look after for 6 hours a day)? It's not all right to ask a qualified nanny to do non-childcare duties, is it?

thanks.

That's a very good idea Issy... if you got organised you could even import a primary school teacher from another country (they are just as impecunious and have just as long a holiday elsewhere) to teach your children a language. Much gentler than sending children abroad at an early age.

I was going to come on and suggest option 6 for holidays: the student nanny.

There are a HUGE number of qualified nursery nurses/nannies (DCE or BTEC) doing undergrad degree in early childhood studies/similar (I do music...) who need a degree before doing a primary PGCE. They're students so they're relatively cheap too....

Ads start springing up on gumtree about 6 weeks before term ends and if you're lucky you can find someone who will do every holiday.

This works if you want a live out nanny either have a student population nearby or a student who comes home for holidays and wants to earn a bit of cash. If you want live-in you can get one for the whole summer. Develop a relationship with one and you've probably got holiday childcare for the next 2 years sorted, plus (if you live near the uni) you have CONTACTS for when your current childcare solution graduates.

It's served me very well for the last 3 years.

I think for the "Anchovy route" to work you also have to have the "right" person.

Our current nanny has previously nannied for children up to the ages of 9 and 11. So I'm hoping she will stay for that sort of time for us. On the plus side, she is the same age as me, so I'm sort of hoping she won't want to go off and start all over again with littlies in the same way a 25 year old would. She is also someone who genuinely enjoys the slightly older children more.

The fact she had experience with older children was a big plus for us when we were looking (as we had bugger all experience ourselves). She has done Biff and Chip and beyond about 852 times.

As ever, its all horses for courses isn't it? And blardy expensive horses/courses at that.

When both my ds's started school we swopped Nannies for Au pairs... this works well (generally!) for us as during term time, they attend college during the day and usually have the same holidays as the kids which means they can look after them and I pay an extra £20 a day. I work so hard for my money I just couldn't get to grips with paying DN to have 9 - 4 off whilst I slog my guts out!

We've been through full-time bored nanny (who was much like MrsWobbles in that even the few jobs that could be done got ignored) - then nanny with own child/nanny share, and are now using before/after school clubs and employed a student teacher as a nanny in the summer hols..with other hols to be covered by grandparents, me, dh or even used as family holidays
The afterschool club works for us as the children go to a small independant school with great pastoral care, so ds for example, does trampolining, chess and football clubs as part of his afterschool club. His previous school insisted that either a childcarer or parent turned up at 3.30 to walk him to any clubs!

Lots of interesting ideas here. Think I will probably end up binning formal childcare options in a year or two, to be honest, since what we need is really fairly minimal - no more than a few days a week for a few weeks really. Don't think I can bring myself to have a live in au pair - but the student option is probably worth exploring.

There's option 7 too, which is nanny-(not au pair)-with-variable-hours - ours does around 25-30 hours (that includes babysitting) a week in term-time and full-time in holidays. She wasn't especially difficult to find, much easier than I thought it would be - the only complicated thing is the pay: term-time hours are paid at an over-the-odds rate, the premium representing an advance on some of the full-time pay - and then full-time is paid at a more usual rate. (So presumably you could be unlucky and have a system-player who suddenly gives notice at the end of the term - we haven't had that, though.)

We tried nanny-housekeeper a while ago - that really didn't work. The skills are very different.

I sort of do option 7 already - but I only have the nanny two days a week. In term time she does two afternoons of 6 hours each and in holidays two full days. she has a contract for 12 hours per week and the holiday hours are calculated as optional extras. However we are in effect paying her for twice as many hours as we need in term time.

But I haven't really had much answer to my question about how appropriate you feel nanny care is as they get older - particularly for whole days in the holidays. If it was me looking after them, I would probably try to organise more time going round to friends or having friends at our house, whereas this doesn't seem to work so well with the nanny. Perhaps this is just a specific issue with my nanny though?

Sorry elliott re your overlooked question, which is an interesting one ... and comes down I guess to the usual old horses-for-courses thing. Our current nanny's training is as a nursery school teacher, but she is fantastic with an 8 and just-7 year old - playdates and piano practice and homework all in her stride, and she uses her initiative to keep them doing new things, inc. the boring necessary growing-up stuff like clearing the table & emptying the dishwasher. Holiday days they seem to spend scoping out every swimming pool in London & rating them on the flumes/wave machines/snack bars.

I can well imagine, though, other nannies we've had, who were marvellous with babies and little toddlers, who wouldn't enjoy, or make the most of, the age mine are now. So it's an individual thing, rather than a "nanny" thing - I think.

PS: leisure pool at Brentford Fountain Leisure Centre, in the funny sort of no man's land between Gunnersbury and Kew Bridge, is fab - and because it's in such an odd back of beyond, seems never to be crowded.

I also think it's an individual thing rather than a nanny thing generally.

Different people have different skills - and you may find that people available holiday times are experienced with/get on better with older children. Also school age children tend to have ideas about what they want to do. If I'm working in a school holiday with older children one of the first things I do is sit down and make a list of things we'd like to do, run it past the parents and then we go off and do it!

mmm, perhaps it is just that my nanny isn't so great at fixing up playdates (or maybe I need to make it easier for her?) I have to say I haven't found it easy to find a really good candidate for the job because it is not a lot of hours, plus I think we just don't have the kind of nanny market that there is in the southeast.