Childcare Tips, Tricks, and Hacks. Ep 88

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode eighty eight, which is first airing April ninth, twenty nineteen. Today's episode is going to be about childcare hacks, more what we wish we'd known going in, some of the best advice from our listeners who've written in all the tips that we're going to be talking about today. But Sarah, you had just the other day a classic childcare dilimma, right, one of those ones that happens to everyone. Right, we do. And I don't think there's a parent out there who hasn't experienced that interesting mix of feelings that you have when you get a text from babysitter, perhaps the day before, hopefully at least the day before. That's oh, I can't make it tomorrow. Sorry. I've actually had a much worse scenario, which is like the actual event is happening and I'm standing at the door with my clothes on and my husband ready, and then no one showing up. That's a little bit different. You don't have a lot of options in that case. But this time I had a babysitter called the day before, and it was there was no like anger on my part because it was a family reason that was completely legitimate, Like I was like, one hundred percent, no problem. But then it left us with the question of, you know, do we cancel our event or do we scramble. If it had just been a date night with Josh and I, I think we would have just said, you know what, family dinner out, let's go. We don't you know, we like our date nights, but it's not that important. But this particular night, we were going out with my husband's coworker, who, as you know, he just started in a new group, so we felt like it would have been kind of awkward. They also don't have kids, so I don't know how incredibly understanding they would have been, although I'm sure they interact with many people who have kids, so we're probably not total anomalies that way. Anyway, so we decided to go the scramble route, and we used a service in our area where basically you're pretty much guaranteed to sit her, and then the more last minute it is, you might pay a little bit more of a premium. But we happened to be members of this particular company because our nanny took a couple weeks of vacation last year, and we worked out the finances and it made more sense to pay their somewhat large membership fee and get a lower hourly rate for those two weeks. So anyway, we took advantage of our membership. We got someone to come. Genevieve was mildly scared of her for a little while, but now that I have an almost seven year old, Annabelle kind of saved the day and found things to distract. I heard this all, of course, and report afterwards, and they were all fine and they went to bed and we enjoyed our night out. Well that's good, and just saying I mean, the reason it was scary is is because it was a new person's not scary. No, there was nothing scary about her. In fact, I felt pretty confident because she's a teacher and had worked in the public school system, so that made me feel Oh, you know, if you're vetted enough to meet that criteria, then of course the babysitting agency also does vet their sitters, but I like to know that she passed the school that miss tests as well. Yeah, no, that's a pretty good sign somebody's gone through that. Yeah, we haven't really used many backup sitter options from that. I generally like to have a list of backup people, although our backup list is probably fairly thin right now, just because our nanny has been so reliable and willing to, you know, work extra hours for date night type things, and as our kids get older, it's become less of an issue on weekends of needing coverage for stuff. So yeah, that was But we have a lot of childcare tips that we've been getting from listeners, so we thought we'd go ahead and read some of them. So Sarah and I are just going to go back and forth highlighting a few that people have sent in that we thought were good. So one that somebody posted on my blog is about checking references when you are hiring someone and asking real questions, so thoughtful questions. A couple that she had come across is not just like do you like this person? I mean, because that's not actually a very helpful question, but like, tell me her strengths and weaknesses, how does she handle constructive feedback? What's one thing you wish she'd done better or differently? Because sometimes you can get things that you know are probably not huge deals in the grand scheme of things, but might be deal breakers for you. So, for instance, if you're like somebody who punctuality is you know, your top thing for various resent you know you have to leave at a certain time. There are trains involved, like you know a certain time you have to be at work. That will probably drive you crazy if the person continually shows up five to ten minutes after you've said even if five to ten minutes isn't a huge deal, and so you want to know that. So if the person's like, yeah, she's great, you know she was always fifteen minutes late, You're like, okay, move on. You know, you know to do that if that's going to bug you, all right, Sarah, what do you have well one of my favorite more global recommendations. We have a lot of specifics here talking about daycare versus pairs, versus nannies, and we'll get there. But one tip here from a blog reader said, my first will be to reassess your needs regularly. I think it is easy to trundle along with a SOSO situation for years just because one is worried about the stress of changing things. But really everyone's needs change regularly, parents, kids and caregivers. I've started reassessing our needs on an annual basis. This doesn't mean upending things, but rather thinking about changes in schedule, will kind of support your kids need homework question mark, she writes, and what kind of support you need, such as laundry and cooking. You may come to the conclusion that your current situation doesn't work anymore and it is time to find someone new. But sometimes just a tweak will improve things. I like that because I think it's so easy for you to get into autopilot mode. For us, even you know, you feel like you're in that daycare place forever, and then all of a sudden you've got three school aged children and you know everything might change. But we don't always take the time to figure out what's the best financial balance, what's the best number of hours, you know, even things like you might feel like you need to outsource cooking now, but when your kids are happy to sit near their homework while you're experimenting in the kitchen, that might not be something that you need when they're a little bit older. So I really like that one. Just to keep things fluid. Yeah, that's a great one. I love the idea of at least an annual check in to make sure that everything's still working. Another one we got here is to start looking early. So this is for people who you know, may or our listeners who are expecting or even thinking about starting a family. But you know, I know Sarah and I we've talked about looking as soon as we've got the positive pregnancy test with our first children. But this person, you know, reminds you to start looking early because it might take a while to find a daycare center that you love, or to get off the list if they're oversubscribed because they're really good. Well, you know, you want to know as soon as like a year ahead of time, which is about what you would be for going back at four months as soon as you learn that you're pregnant, so there's that, or even just you know, starting to interview potential nannies whenever you think that might be good, but before you are right ready to go back to work. And I know what happens here with some people is is you just don't know how parenthood's going to go. And some people are like, well, I know a lot of friends who've decided not to go back to work, and so that seems like, you know, it might be wasted effort, like I want to see how I'm doing with it if I want to go back to work. If you're not sure, the problem is if you don't look ahead of time, you are pretty much guaranteeing that it will be very difficult to go back to work, either because you'll have to choose a daycare that maybe isn't the top of your list because it's you know, where you could get in with short notice and that could make things more difficult for you, or you know, hiring a nanny. You may not have, you know, the time to think about it and get used to it if you've just decided to go back, and then that can create its own issues. So you're better off looking and then trying it. And if you decide, you know, after a few months back they're like, hey, I'm not you know this, this isn't what I want to do. I do want to stay home. Well, then you know, and you don't have to make it under diress that decision. No, that makes sense because you can know, Yeah, it's much easier to reverse the other direction than to get yourself on a waiting list that had already been in process for a year. Absolutely, and I had at least one Instagram comment or talk about how you know. Our podcast does focus a lot on you know, individual childcare like Nanny's, but for those where that's not an option, it might be even more important to just make sure that you're at the front of that line for the centers that you want to be at. Yeah, and with that, we definitely got a number of notes of don't be cheap. I'm not saying that, you know, the cost of a daycare center is one hundred percent correlated with quality, but you know, you definitely don't want to compromise on anything safety related, you know, or staff ratio related or anything like that, because that's where things go wrong is when people don't have enough adults and enough safety procedures in place, and so you definitely do not want to save money there, like find somewhere else, and in the grand scheme of things, you know, drive your car a longer, move to a smaller place like I, but don't don't try to go cheap on that. And actually, on that note, we've got a couple of people comment very specifically about, you know, payment rates for babysitters. I even had one New York reader. I can read her specific comment because she's anonymous. Here she says, pay them fairly. I'm shocked when people tell me that they pay twelve dollars an hour for this is more for babysitters than like nanny's or but still twelve dollars an hour for sitters in New York City, the minimum wage just went up to thirteen fifty, and the going rate for one kid is twenty an hour. She wrote, you will not get smart people working for you long if you treat them poorly and or pay them poorly. Also, the difference between being cheap and paying your sitter fairly and legally is actually not that much. And she's again speaking more about like date night she says, you know, it's thirty two dollar difference whether you're paying them very well and have someone who's going to be very happy to come back, versus paying them under minimum wage. So that's very exactly another one related to that, and then we'll get i think, more into specific stuff with it. But that one person wrote in that you might be better off, she said you had. She's had a few friends go back to work part time because they think it will be easier to get childcare, or they don't like the cost of full time care. However, in this listener's experience, I've seen overall better options available for full time care, whether it's the people who are willing to do that in terms of nannying or the centers that you know, cater to people looking for full time care, whereas part time care tends to be a little bit more informal or maybe you know, home based things like that. And she's saying that the friends work hours who work part time got changed slightly, which put her in a real bind with her part time home daycare, whereas for me with full time care, you know, it was just not an issue to change hours slightly. Well, and that was a theme in general that our readers and listeners said, you know, get more care than you need. You do not want to go for the bare minimum and find yourself scrambling at the beginning and end of the day. Again, in many ways, it may would be better value, as she was saying, because there's usually sort of more full time package type deals available. But that even extends to the listener who I think talked about having four children and having about sixty one hours per week and that being the magic number, very specific, very and she said that they have done less well with less in the past, but now they're adequately stapped and wonder why they ever tried to make things worse with work with less. So skimping out on the number of hours isn't necessarily a great idea either. It may be a recipe for a lot of stress. Yeah, yeah, definitely. If your daycare center closes at six and you are often you know, racing in at six, this is going to be a highly stressful situation that you might need to think about if that's really the best way for you to approach it. I have a few very specific daycare ones. Do you want to as let's say that let's do the daycare ones. Okay, So one person wrote, if you can bring everything your kid needs for the week on a Monday, They did cloth diapers, so on Monday morning they brought the milk, a pilot, diapers, wet bags, and spare clothes. I guess I wouldn't work with Brett. You can't bring like a week's worth of breast milk because well, I guess it could stay good anyway, milk your mileage may vary because I don't know if maybe she's bringing powdered formula or maybe they bring it frozen. And then they thought there, I don't know, but anyway, that was one reader. Somebody else wrote, you know, my kid's daycare is info light. We don't get reports on napping, meals, et cetera. And I had to learn to be okay with that. I realized that I really trusted and respected as teachers, and as a result, trusted they tell me if there was an issue, we get an occasional story, but mostly Judge's activities by how much mud is on his clothes. A lot of mud or a complete outfit change indicates a busy, active day outside. He's only nineteen months, so he's not a reliable narrator. He is very insistent that his favorite teacher out of mouse in her pocket last week. So I think what that person was trying to say is, you know, once you trust a center, you don't necessarily I mean, some people do feel more comfortable wanting the minutia. I felt that way more with my older children than I do with subsequent children, maybe not needing quite as many details. If the kid looks happy and they can basically tell me if they ate something, maybe and if there was a nap, great, If not, that's probably okay too. Yeah, but here's a good one. Try not to pick a daycare that is only convenient for one parent to pick up or drop off, because that means it will always be that parent, which if you guys are okay with that, like, if that's a family decision for whatever reason, then that's fine. But recognize that if it is very convenient for one parent and not the other, that parent will always be doing it, which can be an issue. If you buy name labels, which a lot of daycares do, just put your last name on so the daycare teachers won't get confused by hand me downs. I love that one. You know, that's certainly an issue for families with multiple children who will be going to daycare. One issue, separation anxiety, of course, happens with all children, are almost all children, and happens whether you have you know, nanny, grandma, like, it doesn't really matter who the person is. You can have separation anxiety. But this person suggested at daycare, if your child has separation anxiety at drop off, have them push you out the door. She said it worked for her every time. So I love the image of oh, you've got to push me out. You've got to push me out this door, push her out, all right, kids, That is great. I love that. I'm gonna have to try that. And if you, well, I guess I don't know yet whether Genevieve's going to have that type of anxiety, but I suspect we may have to try that. That's awesome. That's a good one. We had someone right. This is going to maybe a controversial one, she wrote. We have always used daycare as childcare. My biggest tip is to lower your standards. Nobody will care for your child exactly the way you think they should. And the minute you realize and accept this, the whole childcare journey is way more enjoyable. This also applies to nanny's grandparents and eventually school teachers. For example, with our first child, in typical first time uptight mom's style, we didn't allow any treats, us, foods, et cetera. So when she started at daycare, I used to get anxious they gave her food that we wouldn't allow. Once I accepted it was out of my control, I felt so much happier. By letting certain things go and relaxing your strict standards, you will have a much better relationship with the daycare center and your child will not suffer. I think within reason, I think, is it I like that comment. I think everybody has going to find their own level of comfort. But I do think it's nice to take a step back and like, you know, how much will I care in five years if my kid candy on Fridays or something. Yeah, I wouldn't even it's hard. I wouldn't even say that this is about lowering standards. Though I would, I would not use those words, maybe more like don't try to micromanage. Yes, I would say it's not micromanaging, like a place that has, you know, loving caregivers who are safe, you know, well set up, well trained, like, they may do plenty of things better than you. Their standards may be higher than yours. In many cases, you have particular ideas that you have come in to parenthood as preconceived notions that may not survive the encounters with reality. But these people have cared for, you know, hundreds of children, so it is quite possible that they know how to do things better than you. Actually, that was that was one of the strategies that one person wrote on my blog that she said, toddler daycare is a magical thing. My girls learned so many skills that I had no idea they were capable of at age one, like putting on their own coats, cleaning up after themselves at meal time, and putting toys away. She said it also got her reluctant talker speaking, It got her non mobile child crawling. So and that potty training was also well supported at this place, because again, the teachers there have helped hundreds of children learn to use the toilet, and so you have at most learned helped a couple children learned to do this. If you've had relatives that you've helped in the past, so you know, the level of professional is often pretty amazing. So I wouldn't even use the word standards. I think it's just differences in how people approach things. So one of the things that many other readers were passionate about were pairs. Oh my gosh, so many people love their O pairs. I mean, we've talked about them previously. I still think it'd be more it'd be fun to like either hear from an O pair or you know, talk with someone who's had them for years and what that experience is like. So maybe we'll do that in the future, but for now, we had a good comment. Caregivers can help with housework, even O pairs. I would rather have my old pair doing laundry and taking care of my three year old at the same time than me having to do laundry and take care of my three year old at the same time. This reader writes, my undivided time with my children is more valuable than my caretakers undivided time with my children. It's an interesting concept. I am their mother. Maybe this sounds harsh, but I've heard so many mothers talk about how they are multitasking when they are home, but their caregiver, Isn't it seems backward to me? Very interesting. Another one wrote, consider O pairs there are a great source of affordable childcare. There are lots of myths out there, but really there is no flexible childcare situation. Yes, their hours are somewhat limited, but not as many as people think, i e. Whether they can work overnight is agency dependent. Our pairs have been an amazing part of our family and the lovely young women who I have stayed in touch with, So that's lovely. Another parent tip seed here, but it was specifically oh here, it is think outside the box. We had considered switching to an O pair program for years, but I was worried about our need for hours. Still, we had two sitters for a few years. It never occurred to me that you could get a sitter and an O pair combo. When it finally did, we made the switch and it has worked so well for us. We get both the stability of the sitter and the flexibility of the O pair. One might say the best of both worlds pun intended. I know families who do dake care and no pair too. Lots of combinations can work. Yeah, I would definitely say that don't be afraid to stack childcare options. We've heard this from a lot of listeners as well, that this is not an either or thing. It's not necessarily you know, even daycare or nanny. I mean, some people wind up with both, and that's certainly what we did. Once we had our second kid. We hired a full time nanny, but kept Jasper in daycare more as preschool because it was a very good school and he had his friends there and it was great for him, and it was another option, right, So if our nanny was out for some reason, I only had one kid and if you know, Jasper had to be home from daycare, then we had the backup option and it allowed us you know, a few more hours of coverage if we needed it as well. Yeah. I feel like, especially in larger families, and it's the kids get older and you don't need that like twenty four to seven, but you just need someone. Yeah. I think some kind of combination of like an after school program or or you know, daycare or some I don't know, something where they would do activities and be supervised, but then also having the flexibility of an oop pair that could jump in if they were sick. Or something else would be awesome. So that was sort of my O pair section, but people were definitely very very passionate about the O pair. Here is another kind of general tip, keep the provider happy. I know this seems obvious, but the selfless souls that devote themselves to caring for other people's children are human if they like you as a family, I think this goes a long way for the relationship as a whole. And someone else also put it kind of I like how she put it, something like, don't let your do whatever you can to prevent your own stress from being taken out on the caregiver, because that can kind of happen, especially if maybe you're trying to protect your spouse or your children or your child and then there's only one other person that's there that might bear the brunch of it. That is not what their role is. You want to keep things professional, you want to keep things supportive, so to be very careful as to whether that could be a pattern that you want to avoid falling into. I want to leap in with one more just because we're going a little out of order, hear ol. We're reading these from like three different in you know, they're coming in on Instagram. We're looking at our notes from the blog. One that several people posted on my blog, which is daycare related, is that even if you have the day off work or get out early for some reason, you are allowed to leave your child there. So because this is time you can then use for errands for instance, or doctor's appointments or things like that that, you know, especially if you don't have an in home employee as somebody with a nannymite who might be able to do errands, you're having to do a lot of errands yourself, and it might be easier to do it without a toddler. So get that story out of your head right now, that if for some reason you have the day off work and you don't, you know, spend every single second with the kid, you're a bad parent. Feel free to go bring them for you know, at least part of the day, or hey, the whole day if you need to. But we had several people comment on that or if they had different work hours. For instance, one woman said that she has a shift from twelve thirty to eight thirty on Wednesdays, but still brings her daughter a little bit before nine am to day care on those days, and I think her husband picks the child up at you know, four or five o'clock in the afternoon while she's still working. But because of that, she has that morning time on Wednesday to take care of errands and things like that. So very smart life strategy there. One person also mentioned that they use their date night babysitters to they have them come early and then they enjoy going shopping together for the household as a couple when they go out to dinner. So I love that they may want to do their own shopping, they don't want to outsource that, but they don't want to take like three kids with them either, So perfect it can to spend a date a little bit and one other with you know, having a sitter for a few hours on a weekend, which when you're actually in the house, that this can be possible. And this might be something that if it's a neighborhood teenager for instance, that maybe you're not entirely comfortable with leaving that person in charge of your family while you're not around. I mean, they're probably fine, but if you know they're trying someone out new or they're a little younger, for instance, because then they can, for instance, play with a toddler while you spend some time with the older children, or take care of some household chores or projects you know that require tools that you would wish your toddler not to be dealing with and playing with at the time. So that was a good tip as well. I have a couple of babysitting specific ones. Can I do those? Yes, let's do those all right? So one someone said sitter service, and that was kind of like what I mentioned in our intro. There may be one in your area where you can always have a backup, So that's one thing to certainly look into. A lot of people mentioned approaching the workers at your daycare and finding out if they're interested in doing extra babysitting on the side, because they already know your child, and you know, as long as their contract doesn't forbid them for whatever reason, then they may want to make a little bit of extra money and bonus, it's not a new person, so that's wonderful. And then one of my favorites was if you work, let's say with students, or you know, if you're near an academic center and you can get a class of students, that might be interested in sort of having a go to Google doc where basically the whole class can see it and that has your information on and they can basically or they put their information on if they're interested in and available to babysit, and then whenever you need it, you can go and be like, oh, look a class of you know, a first year med student that wants to babysit on Tuesdays and Friday nights, and I'm going out this Friday, and I can just text that person and you know know that they were probably vetted by the school and hey, if they're like a nursing or med student, they may have at least like CPR training and some some useful skills. So or maybe maybe somebody getting like a if you know, have access to a school for early childhood education or something, then then that would work as well. But we had a number of people that use that kind of a shared document to keep a great list of potential candidates available. That's awesome. Do we have any others that we want to go through before our Q and A? I guess just well. I had a couple of people mentioned that don't get that your neighbors can also be backup for you. That can include people that are home with their own children, and which case you can certainly offer to pay by the way or pay them in a great meal or some kind of you know, a play date on a Saturday. They can drop their kids off if they save your butt on a Wednesday. And a final tip in addition to neighbors is that someone mentioned that you can ask people without kids to help out in a pinch. Someone wrote, I don't have children, and I love spending time with my friends children and I'm not bothered at all by spending a few hours with them so my mom friends can get stuff done or whatever they have going on. So I love that because I wouldn't have thought to ask somebody without kids of their own to help out. But you know, I guess you never know unless you ask. They may be actually dying for that kind of you know, break from they want to sit down and play with a toddler for a few hours. I mean, when that's not your normal life, it could be really fun and entertaining. Exactly So, lots of great tips, and of course we welcome more tips out of how you find backup options. You know, questions you've asked when hiring people. Things you look for in a good childcare center. All of these please keep posting them on our blogs on our Instagram page. We love to share these with other people as well. So our question for today is also child care related, and this person writes in do you think nanny's ideally would do additional household tasks? My nanny only wants to focus on baby related stuff. For instance, she doesn't want to unpack groceries, unload the dishwasher, or handle anything. Issues I may have created, such as if the baby's outfit is stained from the weekend, I have to spot treat it. If we go on a trip, she won't unpack his suitcase. She does his laundry once a week, takes out the diaper trash, and that's it. Is this a major issue? I possibly could get her to run some errands for me, and that would be nice. And I do find myself spending a lot of time on the weekend tidying up and generally dealing with the apartment. On the other hand, I really trust her with my baby and she is smart. We hope to have another baby soon, so I think at some point she won't have as much time to help out with household stuff, which is maybe why she's trying not to set that expectation. I just don't know. My question is whether I should possibly switch nanny's to find one who can do more things for me, or if doing so might be detrimental to her baby's development. So it's hard to know in any situation what exactly is going on. And so you know, if you have somebody you absolutely adore and who's wonderful with your baby, I mean, maybe there are other ways you can solve this problem, whether it's hiring, you know, I don't think anyone there's deep cleaning can be done by a cleaning service or something like that. It's harder to be doing stuff like you know, deep vacuuming, washing floors while you're caring for a toddler, and I don't think you should expect that so that you would hire a cleaning service to do. But things like unpacking groceries or you know, unpacking a kid's suitcase for the weekend, it's just sort of generally helping her out around the house or unloading the dishwasher, and so that might be more of a trouble in this case. I mean, your nanny's primary job is to keep your child safe while you and your partner if you have one, are working. But on the other hand, you do want the person who would take on some of the tasks that a stay at home parent would do. And I find it hard to believe that most stay at home parents would not empty the dishwasher if it was done going while during during the work day. So, I mean, the truth is, you know, even if you like this person, most people don't say at this job for more than you know, two or three years, especially if this person isn't necessarily doing it professionally. That if this isn't someone that you hired out of like three other nanny situations that they were doing before, and persons maybe doing it before grad school or something like, they're going to move on, so you may not have to deal with this too long, and when you were hiring the next time, you can specifically build this into the job description that you know, by the way, I would like help with some lighthousehold tasks, doing errands, things like that. In the meantime you might have a good conversation. I mean, it was hard to tell from the initial email if the person had flat out refused a request to do these things, or if it just hadn't occurred to her and the person who was hiring her was, you know, just assuming that people would do these things without being asked, and so that was the problem. So we suggest making a list of the things you'd really like done, have an explicit conversation about it, like, hey, I would really like some help with this during some of the baby's nap time. What would make that doable for you? You know, maybe if the person really thinks it wasn't part of the original job description, you could talk about a small raise in relationship to those things. But it really is helpful to have somebody who is looking for additional ways to help out versus trying not to do things. I guess that is something that you would definitely want to look for in the future with hiring. You want someone who is like on your team, you know, you have shared goals of a well functioning household and happy, healthy children and not just like clocking in clocking out to do her thing. I mean I feel that way at my job at at my work at the hospital as well as my work at home, and I'm very grateful that in both places I work with people who I do very much feel like they want to be team members, and I feel like I want to take care of them too being on the team with them. I think, you know, Laura just said that your nanny's primary job is take care of the child. But you know, if you have hired them and they're your household employee, their job is whatever you say it is. So I mean, I don't mean it in a harsh way. I just mean that you are the one who gets to create the job description and gets to set the rate, and they get to choose whether they accept it or not. Now, the current nanny that you have may feel like how whatever you are paying her is not enough to motivate her to do other things, or she just may have felt like, you know what, I wanted a job where I'm just taking care of the kids. I don't want to do a lot of housework. And that's her choice too. She's a free agent, and she can choose to continue or alter, or she can, you know, choose to do a little bit more and you can come to an agreement there. But I don't think you can think of it as like, you know, that's her job or that's not your job. You guys both get to decide together and if it's not if those if you're not able to come to a common ground, then I think it's probably time for both of you to move on. From a personal note, I mean, we have a nanny that really takes a lot of initiative and does everything I could have imagined her doing in more and I think part of that is that she really enjoys working for and with us because we pay well and we support her and we try to make it a pleasant place to work by not micromanaging and letting her do things her way, and I think she enjoys that. We also did select someone who is a career nanny, so someone may have a very different mindset. Oh I'm just doing this for a couple of years while I you know, I'm going to go to another grad school or get hired by industry, versus someone who's like I want to make a good living as a nanny, and you can do decently well depending on what you're willing to work in the kind of hours that you're willing to work, and you can do that for a number of years. So I think there is a different mindset there as well. So yeah, I feel like, well, my summary, I think I wrote something like, I'd write a list of ways you'd have you like to have your nanny make your life easier, and if she is unwilling to even make an attempt, honestly, I'd move on and that's okay, that might be what's best for both. View With that, you would also ask the question that the listener had asked, the question of whether it would damage the child to have a new a switch in the In the course of this, inevitably there will be switches, like no childcare situation lasts forever. And if you think about it, like you send your kid to preschool, they're going to have new teachers each year. If they move up a year, as some preschools do, not all do, but some do, they're going to have new teachers every grade in school. Children do fine with that. So as long as I think you're not changing every month, I think you're probably going to be okay. You know, going into a situation, you're trying to make it last for at least a few years, just because people like stability in hiring decisions. But knowing that very few situations do last forever is also helpful, and I will say that you do have to keep your expectations realistic. Do not expect a nanny to deep clean the house while taking care of a toddler and an infant. For example, what you might think about if you would like her to do more at home is to actually do some kind of pre school combo where you have one of your kids or both of your kids in like a daycare setting for a few hours, and then give her a list of things to do. Some caregivers actually might enjoy having like a little bit more variation to their day where they do cooking and household stuff in the morning and then more childcare in the afternoon. I mean, you just have to figure out what works. You also need to figure out what there's a matter of that this nanny can't or won't, because if they can't, that's that's understandable. Won't it's a little different. All right. Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about childcare tips from all our listeners. Please continue to send them in. Oh sorry, our love of the week. I'm sorry I didn't even get to that to Sarah, We're not even having Love of the weeks. Failing a party er. No, I didn't put that on there. My love of the week is a new podcast called The Double Shift. Now I will say that this podcast, I don't know that they love our podcast is. I'm not sure that our pastcasts would be their love of the week, because they did make some comment about how like, this is a parenting podcast for everyone, and I didn't know if that was supposed to be like a job at parenting podcasts that were not for everyone. I don't know, maybe not. I think I just took it too personally. However, I thought her last episode, which was about a legal brothel worker in Nevada who has a child, was very interesting and if you're looking for a really diverse array of parenting experiences in how certain women make things work. In a little bit of a different format than ours. It's much more of an interview podcast, and they're going for the exotic where I feel like we go for the mundane. We love the mundane anyway, so you may want to check that out. It's called The Double Shift with Catherine Goldstein. Excellent. Well, I think my love of the week is being able to eat out with my children and not having it be a disaster. We've sort of reached this stage where we went out to eat this weekend and the four year old was sitting next to me and I didn't have to keep him in a seat. He actually sat there and he ate his dinner and it was just like wow, there wasn't anything on the floor. It made everything a somewhat enjoyable experience. So we've reached that moment. It's an amazing that's a very special moment, a graduational moment for parents of young kids. You do get there eventually. Takes a while, but you get there eventually, so it's awesome. This has been Best of Both Worlds Episode eighty eight. Tune in next week for more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the Best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.