We ask each Woman to Watch to write about what's on her mind. Here's what Caroline had to say ...
Creating Greater Sanity with the Help of a Nanny
One of my tricks for maintaining a degree of sanity is to compartmentalize my day into work time and family time. That can be challenging when your Blackberry is receiving emails 24*7, you have teams and clients distributed around the globe, and critical deadlines to meet. What’s key about this for me is that my children can count on my attention and focus in their special time. I preserve the time with the children by carving out windows to complete work projects that don’t impact them. This might mean getting up really early to finish a client deliverable or working after they’ve gone to bed. I tend to work better early in the morning, so 4.30am can sometimes catch me sat at my kitchen counter tapping away on my laptop before the regular routine starts at 6.30am.
A confession: I rarely work at home. I like the idea of working from home, but it doesn’t fit well with my strategy of compartmentalization. Also, I work in a very interactive, team-based environment. Working from home sounds good, but doesn’t fit the practical reality of the hallway conversations, the informal office 'pop-ins', and the extensive video-conferencing. Another aspect of this is that I enjoy being at work and being around other people. When I walk in the door at home, I’m there to focus on my family and domestic activities, or at least until the children are in bed.
Another aspect of compartmentalization is managing my travel schedule. I do this by organizing my travel as best I can so that if I’m traveling one week, I try and spend the next week in town and so on. This requires a lot of communication with my husband who also has to balance travel and evening work commitments. One of our strategies for managing this is by sharing calendar information. We maintain a central calendar at home and we also copy one another on travel arrangements as we book them so that we have immediate visibility to when one of us is out of town. I also try to arrange my activities at my children's school for the weeks that I know that I will be around. This can sometimes have some hilarious consequences, such as the time that I took our rambunctious Labrador for ‘show and tell’ at Kindergarten on my way to an important client meeting. Try steering a Labrador and an excited five year old across a crowded school parking carrying a tray of cupcakes while wearing a business suit and three inch heels!
Being able to compartmentalize home and work life like this is enabled by a great support system. When I became pregnant with my first child six years ago, like many of you I struggled with the child care decision. I knew that I wanted to keep working, but I also knew that to do that successfully I would need to feel very comfortable about my child care arrangements. As we prepared for Jessica’s arrival we looked at daycare centers near my work and there were several good options. I also connected with other working mothers in my network and received a variety of input and advice, including the truthful and unforgettable: "Welcome to feeling tired for the next 9 years of your life!".
What I found was that a couple of the working Moms that I identified most closely with had full time nannies. Like me, they both traveled for their jobs and their husbands also worked full time. They generally had the same values as me about balancing work and being a parent, and the more I thought about our situation, the more convinced I became that a nanny would be the best solution for us. My other key consideration was that neither my husband nor I have any family in state, so our support system had to be created.
Six years on, it’s still working for us, and allowing me to achieve a kind of sanity. It’s definitely not the right choice for everyone, and expense is a major hurdle. If you’re even contemplating engaging a nanny, here are a few things that might be helpful to know that I didn’t realize:
- Your nanny will spend more time in your house than you do!
- No nanny will do everything exactly like you would, so unless it’s something really important – get over it!
- A nanny is like having another (more personal) direct report, so set clear expectations and communicate often.
- Your requirements of the nanny will evolve and change as your child grows, so periodically review his/her duties and expectations.
- Flexibility is critical – that’s why you have a nanny. So when you’re interviewing make sure to check willingness to work extra hours and to start early/finish late etc.
- Personality is key. This is the most personal hire you will ever make, so make sure that the person you pick will work well with your children, you and your spouse (and pets if you have them!).
So what are the trade-offs? Well, I hate to admit it, my house isn’t as tidy as I would like and I still haven’t replaced the ‘temporary’ blinds in our master bedroom that we installed when we first moved in. I also rarely find time to work out (well, that’s my excuse!). Our lives are crazy-busy, kid-oriented, lacking adult time outside work and take plenty of balancing and compromise to make work. But what I’m hoping is that my children grow up understanding that their Mom has multiple roles, and that I am a better Mom to them because of it.
Do you currently have children in childcare? If so, how does your current childcare situation add to or detract from your success and sanity? What do you imagine as the ideal childcare situation for you? Join the discussion.
