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Home › Articles › Caregivers › In-home Childcare

In-home Childcare

Making It Work for You

By Melissa Granberry

Pages:  1  2  3  

Monitoring the Situation

"In-home care has the advantage of providing a more intimate environment for your child," says D'Amico. "But at the same time you are placing all of your trust in this one person. You have to be able to trust that they will act responsibly and do the right thing for your baby. It can be really hard to find someone you trust in that way."

So how to monitor the caregiver to ensure that they are not surfing the Web while your child is watching another Barney video? "Begin slowly," D'Amico says. "Don't leave your child with the new sitter for eight hours on the first day. Instead, do some work around the house or work from home. Lengthen the next few visits and leave for a while, but stop back at the house on and off throughout the day to check in. This is a great way to get a feeling for how things are being managed at home."

Check references carefully. "Ask the references what they saw as the strengths and weaknesses of this person," D'Amico says. "Then compare these characteristics to what is most important to you and the care your child gets." Even if the nanny comes with wonderful reviews – trust your gut instincts. "If you are just getting bad feelings about someone, don't use them."

Defining Childcare

There are a variety of terms for people who work in the home. Here are the definitions used by the International Nanny Association (www.nanny.org) to describe various in-home childcare jobs.

Babysitter: Provides supervisory, custodial care of children on an irregular fulltime or part-time basis. No special training or background expected.

Au Pair (Foreign): Foreign national in the United States for up to a year to experience American life. Lives as part of the host family and receives a small stipend in exchange for babysitting and help with housework. May or may not have previous childcare experience.

Parent/Mother's Helper: Lives in or out and works for a family to provide full-time childcare and domestic help for families in which one parent is home most of the time. May be left in charge of the children for brief periods of time. May or may not have previous childcare experience.

Nanny: Employed by the family on either a live-in or live-out basis to undertake all tasks related to the care of children. Duties are generally restricted to childcare and the domestic tasks related to childcare. May or may not have had any formal training, though often has a good deal of actual experience. A nanny's workweek ranges from 40 to 60 hours per week. Usually works unsupervised.


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