October 22, 2015

The Two Most Important Things I Learned About Family Management as a Nanny

Written by: Flayk Beta Tester

As a nanny of two kids it’s my responsibility to drop off and pick up Noah and Ethan for all of their scheduled activities. Their parents make the plans and then rely on me to make sure they make it to music class, swim practice, speech therapy, and playdates. Once in awhile, Noah’s swim practice collides with a playdate their mom has set for Ethan and the mom and I have to coordinate to make sure we’ve got it covered. I’ve been with this family for two years and these are the top two do’s and don’ts I would recommend to keep your family organization on point.

# 1: Do communicate daily to stay on top of changes in plans and new activities

If you set a schedule at the beginning of the week and assume it will stick, you face the risk of life getting in the way. Let’s face it, we’ve all had to back out on commitments if something more pressing comes up. When something on the schedule changes it benefits everyone to communicate this as early as possible. Now we use Flayk to let the family know if someone can no longer follow through with a task. Ethan’s mom might plan to pick him up from school, but if a work meeting runs late she will flayk the task to me to let me know right away and find out if I can fill in for her.

Last week I committed to going grocery shopping for the family, only to realize that with a few extra playdates I only had about 15 minutes without the kids every day, certainly not enough to check off all the items on the list. Since I was able to flayk the task early Friday morning, they knew right away and the dad could stop by the store on his way home from work. So much easier than frantically texting all of them. Plus, if I had waited until they got home on Friday to tell them I didn’t have a chance to go grocery shopping, they would have had to go out again after an already long week.

# 2: Don’t rely on sticky notes to do the job

The kids’ mom and I laugh about this now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. In the morning the two of us agreed that I would bring Noah to the park for a playdate from 2-4 and she would pick up Ethan from swim practice, which also ended at 4. I took the kids to the library before she left for work and since we usually came home for lunch she left a note on the counter telling me she forgot about a parent-teacher conference that afternoon and asking if I could actually pick Ethan up from swim practice ― this was back before we all had Flayk. Well, the kids and I ended up having a picnic lunch that day and never came home for lunch, which means I never saw the note. When their mom and I got home at the same time that night we were both shocked to see that Ethan wasn’t with the other. A look of panic rose on each of our faces as we realized no one picked Ethan up from swim practice! Of course, Ethan was fine, but the miscommunication we faced proves that notes on the fridge don’t always do the job. Life isn’t perfect, things come up and you have to be able to rely on flexible solutions.