The Nanny Podcast

Welcome to the Nanny Podcast, I am so happy you are here. Today I am going to tell you about a request we have gotten in different variations that always leave me with more questions and feelings than others might. The request is, I want an ugly nanny. First of all, we do not have any ugly nannies. I have met very few ugly people in my life, it’s hard for me to even think of someone ugly, and this is about to get a little personal, so be warned. You know how we say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder? What does categorizing people as ugly or not ugly say about you? I am guessing that the people asking for ugly nannies have a few things going on, first they have decided what is visually appealing in a person, my guess is that they don’t know or understand a lot about personality or charisma, which is what most people are ultimately attracted to, but they base their judgement on a person’s physique, facial features and grooming habits, maybe? If they met me what would they think? Their ugly algorithm wou

Welcome to the Nanny Podcast, I’m Hanna from Riviera Nannies, I am so happy you are here today.   Today I wanted to talk about a complaint that I sometimes see from families, that their nanny is always sick.   I think there are two ways to see and talk about this.   First, is your nanny ok? Is she getting sick from your kid and is she ok? Is she really sick or is she not happy coming to work? For most issues, talking about it and having good communication with your nanny will resolve a lot of problems, so first, talk to her. What is going on with her?   I know how frustrating it can be as a family when you depend on your nanny for your work and to make sure that your kids are well taken care of. There is so much guilt and feelings of not being enough as a parent anyhow, you have hired a nanny because you want your kids taken care of, and now she is not there as consistently as you need. How can you support yourself and your nanny for this to work?   Talk to her. Ask her if there is anything she needs? You get

D is one of our nannies, she is wonderful, kind and experienced.  In this episode she shares her story of her nannying with us.  Enjoy :)

Welcome to the Nanny Podcast season 2 episode 2. I am your host Hanna Schaer from Riviera Nannies, a nanny agency based in the south of France. I am so happy you are here.   Today we are going to talk about cell phones.   I think we can all agree that cell phones are really useful tools, we can choose to do a little or a lot on them. Some people use them just as phones. Some phone and text. Some use them as a camera. Some use them for social media.   I went to a really interesting talk with Elizabeth Milovidov from digitalparentingcoach.com about children and technology, and I thought her talk was really inspiring. I am not going to talk to you in this podcast about children and technology, but about us and technology. There are a lot of similarities though, and the most important points are the same.   I think technology is awesome. Thanks to technology you are listening to me now, I recorded this on my computer, edited it on user friendly software and brought it to you through syndication to your iTunes or

Welcome to season 2 of the Nanny Podcast, I am so happy you are here.   Today we are going to ask ourselves the question “are you looking for the wrong things?”   It goes for both nannies and families, I think often nannies are looking for the wrong things in families to work with, and as often, families are looking for things in nannies that is not what is going to work for them.   Let me explain what I mean.   I get a lot of nannies contacting us, looking for work, and when they tell us what kind of work they want, to goal and the path to get there are often not compatible.   For example, we might have a nanny who wants to work in the villas in the cote d’azur, but she doesn’t drive, doesn’t have own transportation and is not interested in getting it. Fair enough, whatever the reason is for that, but looking for jobs in the villas is not going to work out in their favor, because often there is not public transportation that supports it, and the client might is probably not going to want to schedule their ch

One time I had a prospective client tell me after we had done her intake interview, filled out all the forms and she had told me exactly what she wanted, which was an au pair, we will get to that in a minute, and I told her that we could find the staff she needed, it just wouldn’t be one person, but two or three. We have talked about what au pairs are before, they are a cultural exchange program, not a professional doing a job, so while at first it seemed to this family that what they wanted and needed was an au pair, their kids were at school during the day and the parents travel a lot and work out of the area where they live, when the list of duties and the schedule arrived I wasn’t sure what to answer except no, that’s not an au pair, that’s a part time nanny, a cook and a housekeeper. Without going into too much detail about what they wanted let’s just say that the cleaning duties went far past the kid related clean up and meal prep. When the kids were in school all day they wanted the house deep cleaned,

Theresa Destrebecq is back to talk to us about getting along. Theresa is a conflict resolution coach and will talk to us about how we can be more successful and get along better in professional relationships.

I want a french live out au pair Sometimes we get requests that are difficult, sometimes we get requests that are confusing and sometimes we get requests that are impossible and illegal. Even though we don’t place au pairs, we still get a lot of questions about them. I think most people think an au pair is a cheap way to get childcare, it is not, and I will explain why in a minute, but most of all I think a lot of people don’t know the difference between an au pair and a nanny so we will talk a little bit about that. An au pair is not a professional. Having an au pair is a cultural exchange program, and this is where a lot of misunderstandings happen. An au pair does not have any training or experience (babysitting is not experience) in general. Generally they do not know about childhood development or education, they are young people who want to experience another culture and learn a new language in a foreign country. The laws are different in different countries, but normally, an au pair can work up to 30 h

One of our awesome nannies shares her thoughts on nannying, what motivates and inspires her and what she thinks is important in the nanny-family relationship.  

Welcome to the Nanny Podcast. My name is Hanna Schaer and I am the founder of Riviera Nannies, a nanny agency in the south of France. If this is the first time you are listening to our podcast, welcome :) this is where we talk about everything nanny, we talk about how to improve your career, things you love about nannying, how we as an agency work and so much more.   Today I am going to tell you about a kind of situation we run into here at the agency every once in a while. It happens more often than I think it should and I want to talk about why it is unreasonable and what we do when it happens. It is a little bit of a behind the scene of the nanny agency if you want :)   When clients contact us we ask them to fill out a questionnaire, telling us about the kind of nanny they are looking for and what the job they are offering looks like. We want to have a profile of the client, just like we do of the nanny so that we can make the best matches. This is a typical conversation in this kind of scenario:   Client:

We talk about when we get requests for placements that are inappropriate and illegal (and outside of the types of placements we do at all). I get to hear a lot of personal requests and quite often it comes from a place where a family wants something that either does not exist of is not legal (or moral).  Let us know what you want to hear about, email me at hello@rivieranannies.fr and put podcast in the subject line to get in touch :)

We talk to Theresa Destrebecq from Thrive Within. We talk about setting boundaries and how you can support yourself and be a better nanny with your boundaries clearly set and maintained. We also talk about how your boundaries gives you limits and how you want to set them consciously.  For any questions or requests, reach out to us at hello@rivieranannies.fr and put podcast in the subject line, we love hearing from you :)  

I want to talk about something that might make some of you nod in agreement, some of you irritated and some of you not know about. The celebrity nanny, or rather the person who has been a nanny to a celebrity family. There are so many famous people in the world, and many of them have kids and I would guess that the vast majority of them have nannies. It’s actors, singers, artists, athletes, politicians, royals, people that are famous because they are famous and so on. So many nannies have worked for someone famous as some point and are not affected by it at all, and don’t feel the need to brag about it, after all, they are just people and it is just another job, perhaps demanding in an unusual way, but still, it is taking care of and educating children whether they have famous parents or not. In my experience these families value discretion and professionalism even more than us mere mortals and would rather hire a nanny who is less star struck and more focused on the job.

Welcome to the Nanny Podcast. I want to tell you about a kind of situation that surprises me every time and I want to share how we handle and advise in a possibly tricky situation. There have been times when clients ask for “exotic” nannies and it doesn’t necessarily mean what you might think, we have had families say to us that they just want something different from everyone else. Here the nanny becomes a commodity, it is not longer about getting the best care for the child but rather about the image you project. A keeping up with the Jones’ if you want. Hiring a nanny is a really great thing for your family, you have another adult who is professionally trained to raise babies and children. When picking the perfect person for your family there are many things to consider. What language the nanny speaks is of course important. If you want your kid to speak a foreign language fluently and understand a foreign culture, hiring a nanny who can give you that is a great idea, but realistically he or she would have

Why is women acting confident sometimes frowned on? Do you sometimes think or hear that a woman is described as cocky, aggressive or other negative words describing her behavior? Are we participating in the image by judging ourselves? To me, a really confident person, regardless of gender, that I tend to admire and look up to has a calm about them that tells me that they are comfortable with themselves and what they know and also with what they don’t know. Being assertive is not necessarily being confident, I think it also relates very closely to charisma which is very often described as being fully present and attentive to a person. Do you think that maybe when we pay attention, really pay attention, look people in the eye when talking and listening, showing our ability to be present, that we are able to show our confidence without being aggressive? I think so.   What is the difference between being confident and over confident and what does it have to do with nannying? Confidence is being comfortable in you

The nanny podcast is brought to you by Riviera Nannies. It gives us a platform to talk about everything nanny, governess, tutor, maternity nurse and childcare. This first episode is just to tell you a little bit about who we are and why we wanted to start the podcast.