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nanny who is socially able to navigate the playground, play dates, birthday parties and other children’s social events.

If academics are important to you as a parent – and many parents of very young children are already thinking about this – then you may want a nanny who has a strong educational background.

If you want someone who is experienced at running a home and a family, then a nanny with less formal education and a good relationship with her big family may be more valuable to you. A nanny with an artistic side, who appreciates art and literature, is great for kids with creative streaks. A nanny with a “jock” background is great for active kids who love running around. A nanny who loves science and math puzzles and experiments may be great for your numbers-loving child.

Some nannies are very sophisticated, and are able to take your children to the movies, lunch and shoe shopping, while meeting up with the child’s friends and their nannies along the way. These nannies are adept with cars, cell phones and restaurants. They have the abilities of a personal assistant, but they love working as nannies.

These nannies tend to have other nannies like themselves as friends, and will likely try to get their friends and their friends’ charges together with your children under their charge. This can be a nice way for you to end up meeting the parents of other children that you may not normally meet – or it may leave you feeling that your child is traveling with too fast a crowd.

What if you and your child want different kinds of nannies?

If you want your child to learn to read, and you hire a nanny who loves reading to children – but all your child wants to do is drop water balloons out of the window onto the lawn, and play tag and catch – you’re going to have some incompatibility problems between the nanny and the child, vice versa, same problem. A nanny who hears that you want the child out socializing every day, but finds your child adamantly wants to stay home and play with blocks, is going to run into a conflict between what the parent has instructed and what the child wants to do.

You’ll find out about this incompatibility in a number of ways. You may see it yourself. You may hear about it from the nanny. You may not believe the nanny, or you may encourage her to keep trying your way, until the child acquiesces, the nanny quits, or you have a screaming child and frustrated nanny.

When this happens you can ignore it and hope it goes away – which it may. Or you can ignore it until the child starts acting out in gradually increasing ways, or until the nanny quits.