be valuable information. Someone who has family waiting for them at home will not
want to work late.
After you greet her, bring her
inside and do the interview in the kitchen, the living room or the child’s
room. Do not interview the nanny in your bedroom or a bathroom. These are not
appropriate places for interviews.
Decide where you want any interview
candidates who arrive early, or while you are still interviewing another nanny,
to wait. Ideally, you will greet the arriving nanny and explain that you’re not
done with your current interview, and ask her to wait in a den or some other
room that has a door so you can have privacy with the woman you are currently
interviewing.
If the arriving nanny is on time
and you are running late, do not keep her waiting more than fifteen minutes. If
you do, then this nanny, who may become your hired help, will have a precedent
for timeliness set by you.
She may take her cues from you, and if you say nine o’clock, and then you show up at nine fifteen or nine
twenty-five, she will begin to get the message that if you say nine o’clock, she, too, can show up late because
you probably won’t be there anyway.
Whether or not you like this, it is human
nature. If you expect certain behavior from someone, then you should make a
practice of that same behavior yourself.
This is a tricky question, and
there is no right answer, although many parents are vigilante that there is a
right and a wrong way to do this.
You give him or her time to adjust
to the idea because the process is several weeks long at the shortest, and
several months long at the longest. The child can come to know that this
process in your house is normal.
You can also gradually introduce the idea of a nanny by
having play dates with the child and his other friends with their nannies,
consciously telling your child that little Billy’s nanny will be brining him to
play because Billy’s mother is at work for the day,
