Now that I have a car, I’m going to need to increase my income.
I’ve replied to three nanny posts on the Trinity Career Services website, but Buffalo Grove Dawn and Hawthorn Heights Michelle are both looking for someone who would be available for the summer too (you’d think they would mention that in the ad =).
Third time's a charm:
Deerfield Gail wants a ‘sitter for weekday afternoons and Saturday nights. Four kids! Emily 11, Sam 9, Alec 7 and Jilly 3. Alec calls me the au pair, because they used to have a Nicole from Australia who lived-in. Jilly said she was mean. Vicky, the most recent live-in, was let go over a dispute that involved driving Gail’s car in the snow. My “interview” was Friday night. I started Saturday.
Below is my nanny article that was published in the Digest Jan. 25th.
North Shore Nannies
by Nicole Collins
The North Shore Chicago is known for its affluence and high-paid nanny jobs. ‘Sitters are in high demand in these parts, and at Trinity International University (TIU) there are plenty in supply.
Both female and male TIU students find job postings for babysitting and subparenting on MyTrinity online. Just Monday over two-dozen want ads were posted at a minimum of 10 dollars an hour.
“We are a happy, fun-loving family with 3 adorable boys,” wrote a mom from Deerfield. “Looking for someone to play with and help with homework from 4:00 – 7:00.” The pay rate is 10 to 12 dollars and the mom is usually home but she “needs an extra set of hands.”
References and a car are commonly requested, but not always required.
Local suburb parents have paid up to 14 dollars cash an hour while students pocket tax-free income – tax-free for the nanny. The money is never a problem, but the hours add up, the favors increase in inconvenience and the pressure becomes overwhelmingly stressful.
Two anonymous TIU Seniors, Nanny A and Nanny B, are seasoned ‘sitters of the area. They worked nearly 30 hours a week during the summer and have cut that number in half during the spring semester.
Both are familiar with working while the parents are around, and Nanny A has experienced babysitting children with an incompetent father.
“He can’t put them to bed. He can’t take care of his own kids,” said Nanny A. “She cooks some times, we usually order food for take-out, I clean up more than she does, she has a cleaning lady, and she bribes her kids… They can’t take care of their kids by themselves.”
Nanny A was called Tuesday while at school at 11 a.m. to drive to the children’s house, grab wipes and diapers, a change of clothes, and water bottles for everybody, go to Portillos at 11:30 a.m. and save 16 seats. Nanny A is paid 12 dollars an hour.
Nanny B usually shows up to take over cooking breakfast for a mom who works from home. She has learned that “you can do anything with money.”
“The mom accidentally messed up the t-shirt designs for her daughter’s birthday at the Marriot and paid off the front desk guy to reprint the corrections at Kinkos within the hour,” said Nanny B.
During the summer, Nanny B spent a lot of time at a clubhouse pool with her kid, and was scorned for repeating swimwear.
“I wore little sundresses and my cute glasses, because I can't look bad in front of these crazy women who are never seen in anything but the latest fashion in tennis wear,” said Nanny B. She gets paid up to 18 dollars an hour.
The TIU nannies have enough anecdotes to fill a book. But they are all about six years too late.
In 2002, two New York University graduates teamed up and published a novel about their combined eight years of Upper East Side Manhattan babysitting that paid for college tuition and loans. Newsweek announced the novel a “phenomenon.”
Authors Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin’s New York Time’s bestseller The Nanny Diaries played out on the big screen last year starring Scarlet Johansson.
The movie and book are fiction versions of Nanny’s experience at an upper class Manhattan home with the X family: an absent, unfaithful and workaholic father, and a grossly self-seeking mother who does not cook, clean or care for her son, a neglected four-year-old boy.
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