Lucyb

My Requirements

Hello! We are looking for someone to take care of our 3 young children. We are ideally looking for care on Tues, Wed, Thurs from 8am to 6pm. We need the role to start at the beginning of June (could do earlier).

During the hours of 8am and 3pm we are looking for someone kind and energetic to take our 13 month old daughter to local activities and play dates, prepare simple baby meals and put her down for naps.

We have two older children, a 4 year old boy and a 5 year old girl, who are at school and nursery until 3pm/3.15pm. School is a 5 minute walk from our house and nursery is a 10 minute walk in the same direction, and during term time the role would include picking them up post-3pm and either bringing them home to play and have dinner, or taking them to a park / play date before dinner.

During school holidays the role will include some full days with all three children. However we will also have a mix of holiday clubs and grandparent help for our two older children because we understand (from our own experience!) that it can be tiring to have all three children for full days, particularly for consecutive days. We also plan to take quite a bit of holiday over the longer summer, Christmas and Easter breaks.

As a family we love being active and spending lots of time outside. Our eldest two children get on well most of the time and are happiest when playing some sort of imaginary game outside together. Our daughter loves art and music, our son loves dressing up and football, and they both enjoy things like lego / building with magnet tiles / craft / dancing / games. Our baby is very energetic and affectionate, and it's really easy to make her laugh. She is at the 'exploring' age where she moves very quickly on foot and loves to climb, so she needs to be watched very carefully!

In terms of our approach to bringing up our children, we like to give them as much independence as we can safely give them, as well as age-appropriate responsibilities such as clearing up their plates, helping with dinner and our baby, tidying up etc. We generally love schedules and routines, but we are flexible with them if there's an exciting reason to throw them out of the window (e.g. birthdays, a theatre show, a family event etc). We allow TV/screens in moderation for our oldest two children but they do not have a particular time of the day/week that they expect to be able to use them and they probably watch TV once a week on average. We love sitting down for their meals and one of us will try to get home for their dinner time (5.30) whenever possible.

Of the three days a week that the job spans, we expect that one parent will be working from home for two of those days on average. Having previously worked from home with our former nanny through the COVID years, we are used to this arrangement and are aware of the pros and cons of it! Our study is at the top of the house and we cannot hear what is happening on the ground floor from up there (and vice versa). We generally stay in the study when our children are in the house, and if we need to leave the house (usually just for lunch) we will either sneak out while our baby is having her lunchtime nap, or liaise with our nanny over text about how to sneak out unnoticed if children are up and about.