Recently a nanny was caught hitting and kicking a baby. It\u2019s hard to understand how someone could do something like that to a child. Thank goodness the family had a nanny cam and caught it and fired her immediately.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure that many parents are thinking after reading about this incident, \u201cHere we go again, another nanny hurting an innocent child. We can\u2019t trust a nanny with our children.\u201d \u00a0This event is alarming and disturbing to all of us and probably more so to those of us in the online nanny business.<\/p>\n
Rather than going into a defense of online nanny services<\/a>, I want to talk about what could be done to possibly prevent this from happening. I\u2019m not going to address the particular circumstances of this sad event since I don\u2019t know enough about the details to make a comment, and I certainly don\u2019t want to say anything that could imply parents are at fault when something like this occurs, they most definitely were not.<\/p>\n I believe that hiring and vetting a nanny is a complex, difficult task and that the difficulty is underestimated by many families who believe they can go by their \u201cgut\u201d when hiring a nanny<\/a>. Of course our gut is the primary line of defense for all of us adults when making important decisions, but gut is built on experience, which few families have in this arena. Are we all experts in human nature and do we all have great interviewing skills when hiring a potential caregiver to our child? Do things like time, pressure to hire quickly so that mom and dad can get to work, and money not impact our judgment? Of course they do. Have you have heard about Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s rule of 10,000 hours to be an expert in an area?<\/p>\n It may sound strange coming from the owner of an online nanny service to say this, but the best line of defense for families hiring a nanny is using a full-service nanny agency<\/a>. They have the skills and discipline to get it right. Nanny agencies have tough standards on experience and references that eliminate most candidates so families aren\u2019t exposed to them. They know how to find phony references and they interview thousands of nannies-and as we know with experience comes expertise.<\/p>\n In the next installment I\u2019ll discuss tools that families can use when hiring on their own without an agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently a nanny was caught hitting and kicking a baby. It\u2019s hard to understand how someone could do something like that to a child. Thank goodness the family had a nanny cam and caught it and fired her immediately. I\u2019m sure that many parents are thinking after reading about this incident, \u201cHere we go again, another nanny hurting an innocent child. We can\u2019t trust a nanny with our children.\u201d This event is alarming and disturbing to all of us and probably more so to those of us in the online nanny business. Continue reading