How to Find the Best Nanny or Babysitter

A reader emailed me recently asking for any advice I might have regarding the hiring of nannies and babysitters. Here is what I said:

What I do is post an ad looking for someone willing to learn (i.e. read). Qualifications and current knowledge are often cumbersome--I have found that training a blank slate is usually easier than retraining someone who thinks they know what they are doing. My only qualification is that the person is interested in learning and growth.

The first thing I have my potentials do is watch the 4-DVD set on caring for infants at RIE.org. I find the attitude of respect in those DVD's helpful even though my child is no longer an infant. Then I have my prospective nanny watch my 2 lectures on YouTube. After that we can have a real discussion about whether or not she/he would enjoy relating to children in the way I describe.

If the potential nanny or babysitter likes what (I will use "she" but it could be either) she has learned thus far and talks about being inspired, I continue with her. If she comments on the ideas being weird, I let her go and find someone else.

Then I begin training which involves her just coming to hang out and watch how I interact with my son. Then I watch her interact with him and give feedback. At the end of the first day, I pull out a stack of 5-10 books (most likely the ones from my recommended reading list) and show them to her and ask her which one she would like to read first. I loan her that book and tell her that when my son is busy, she can read. This is a double bonus: she is being "paid" for the time she spends reading and she ends up not "helicoptering" over my son all the time. Many of the girls I have trained have taken the books home and continued to read them in their free time. Some say they hate reading and never get through the first book--what I have found is that those people won't last long. It's a sign that the proper care of children is not interesting to them--and none of us will last that long or do that well at a job we are not interested in.

Recommended Reading List Link: http://roslynross.blogspot.com/p/reading-recommendations.html

UPDATE: a reader wrote to me the following in regards to the above advice about how to hire a great nanny--

I wanted to thank you for your insight; we hired a nanny! I spoke with her on the phone and got the feeling that she was definitely open to finding out more about what I was talking about. Then when we met in person, SHE asked ME if I had any books or resources she could read. I gave her Baby Knows Best, as my MIL is currently borrowing my RIE DVD's. She's currently coming to shadow about once a week or so for the next month so she can see us interact with him, and she's very inquisitive.
I felt a lot more confident looking for someone who was willing to learn instead of scouring for someone who already knew what I was looking for. It's almost embarrassing that I hadn't considered the idea myself, haha. I saw that I prompted a blog post, so hopefully others find your ideas helpful as well.

Children Raised in Reality Are Not Afraid on Halloween or Afraid of the Dark

Halloween was always my least favorite holiday when I worked with small children. There was always some costumed person the child saw while trick-or-treating that scared him or her to death. For years I spent every Halloween comforting traumatized, crying children. One little boy had nightmares for over a week following the holiday. 

I have long wondered if Anders would find costumed people scary. He has no concept for the scary things people dress as on Halloween i.e. would seeing a person dressed as wicked witch scare you, if you had no concept in your mind of evil witches using magic to ruin your life? Would a person dressed as a witch be scary if you had no concept of magic? Some of the costumes in the windows around Los Angeles are pretty evil looking, but Anders has no real concept of evil, so I have been curious to know how he will think about these things. Will he find evil faces scary or will he just think they look weird?

I have told Anders about the holiday coming up, Halloween in which people wear costumes, and recently I took him to a costume store. He knows about the concept of wearing costumes from the Renaissance Fair (which he loves) so costumes are a pretty positive thing for him. He has shown no interest thus far in the role-play costumes that kids his age often get into. For example, he loves construction and pretends to do it every day, but when I offered to buy him a construction outfit on three different occasions he said, "No,"

At the costume store (Cinema Secrets if you know it) there were some pretty fantastic and gruesome costumes on display, one in particular, a witch, was pretty horrifying. Anders pointed to it and said, "What's that?" I said, "That's a costume for someone who wants to pretend to be a very ugly, old lady. Some people call ugly, old ladies 'witches,' and when they are pretending to be a witch they laugh like this, 'He he he he he!'" I said, "Do you think this costume is scary or or ugly or just weird?" He said, "Not scary." I said, "Do you think it's ugly?" He said, "No." I said, "Weird then?" But he had already walked off, which means his answer was, "Boring." We looked at other things. He was most interested in the makeup that made people look like they had huge wounds, but he did not think that was scary either.

Anders does not want to dress up on Halloween, though I imagine if his father or I were going to dress up he would possibly change his mind, but we have no plans to. The only costume Anders showed any interest in was a bear costume, but he didn't want to wear it and in the end just wanted a little bear figurine to play with. (He is very interested in bears right now thanks to the Disney Nature Bear documentary I bought for our plane rides over the summer.) 

A side note: Anders is not afraid of the dark. He is afraid of falling when there are no lights on, but perhaps since he has never heard of ghosts or monsters and we have spend a lot of time playing with shadows, he has always been comfortable with the dark, inside and out, and has never needed a nightlight or anything like that.

Anyway, just a development update for those of you who are interested in knowing what happens when you raise your kids without fantasy fiction!