Hiring a Nanny/Babysitter

This checklist will help you ask the right questions when interviewing a potential in-home childcare provider. ...

Keep the babysitter fully informed. Record all emergency information and pertinent data on this printable page, and keep it handy. ...

In-Home Childcare No matter how much you decide to work, you'll almost definitely be in the market for childcare. Once upon a time, grandparents, aunts, or cousins handled childcare for working parents. But fewer and fewer new parents today live...

Using Relatives as Childcare GiversEven as recent as a couple of decades ago, members of extended families were likely to live in fairly close proximity to one another, making it easy to share the burden of caring for each other's children when n...

In-Home Childcare Employment Issues A childcare provider who looks after your child in her home rather than yours is usually not considered to be your employee, but is instead known as an independent contractor. If you, rather than the nanny or t...

Locating Nannies So, how does one begin a search for a nanny? There are generally two ways to go about it. You could go through a nanny agency or you could seek out nanny candidates on your own. The advantage to using an agency is that they do th...

Hiring an In-Home Childcare ProviderBefore you leave your children with an in-home care provider, you first must go through the process of interviewing your applicant and checking her background. Once you find a provider you wish to hire, you wou...

Au PairsAu pairs may be a more cost-effective option for families with two or more children than paying for each child to attend outside childcare. An au pair is a young person from another country who comes to the United States to absorb America...

How to Get What You Want from the Nanny Love for Hire Suppose you could create the ideal nanny. Chances are it would be someone who sat down for her interview and announced, "I have really enjoyed being a nanny. I honestly don't believe there is ...

Believe in BabysittersBefore we had kids, dinner guests shared their babysitting morays with us: Except for a handful of evenings when relatives visited, the couple didn't go out by themselves for the first three years of their children's lives Â...

Pre-employment questions are low-tech, easy tests you can perform when screening someone to take care of your kids. ...

A mother describes the aberrant/regressive behavior her kids are displaying in the wake of their nanny leaving. ...

It's common to "hire" an older sibling to baby-sit a younger one. Suggest these activities to your helpful child. ...

Finding the Right Babysitter When you need to take a break, how do you find someone to temporarily take care of your children? If your extended family is scattered across the country, you can no longer count on droppingthe children off with gran...