National Nanny Training Day was initiated last year by Nanny Biz Reviews to foster excellence in the Nanny Profession across America. On April 20, 2013, over 2,000 nannies will meet in over 30 cities across the country to hone their skills in teaching, training and nurturing young children. Caring Nannies is proud to be the local sponsor for the PHOENIX event. We’ve planned a great morning of topics on boosting brain development and other hot topics, top speakers, networking and exciting Raffle Prizes. As with any profession, continued education is important and research shows that when caregivers are trained and knowledgeable, children clearly benefit.
Consider covering the cost of this training for your Nanny. Early bird rates are only $20 which includes the cost of sessions from 9 AM to 2PM plus lunch, a great goodie bag, certificate of completion, and invaluable networking. Early Bird Rate ends on April 1. Sign Up Here

# 7. The Nanny will feel more like it’s a team effort because you’re involved in sending her to the training.

# 6. Nannying can be an isolating career without access to peers. This will strengthen her feelings of camaraderie and bolster her emotionally, causing her to want to give even more to your family.
# 5. Even the most educated and experienced nanny needs to get excited by learning new ideas.
# 4. She’ll come to work the next Monday morning happier, more enthusiastic and confident and those feelings will spread to your child/ren.
# 3. She’ll learn new skills to teach creative thinking, ideas to implement teaching math through play, how to transition to a toxic free environment, tips to putting together a delicious and healthy dinner for you, and ways to communicate with you more effectively.
# 2. You’ll be affirming how much you value and appreciate her skills and expertise.
# 1. She’ll feel loved and appreciated.

Beth

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On Saturday November 3, Caring Nannies held it’s four hour Nanny Boot Camp.

This free course is designed for all nannies placed or being placed through Caring Nannies, and empowers them with greater skills and professionalism and gives families a higher level of care and service. Caring Nannies offers three training events per year, and we require our nannies to attend two.

Nanny Boot Camp is an ongoing event and our goal is to see every nanny have a chance to attend. It covers communication, boundaries, constructing a Working Agreement, developing a weekly Play Plan, using the Nanny Log, improving children’s behavior, consistency, age appropriate activities, child health and safety, discipline techniques, establishing routines, defining your role. We teach using role-playing, discussing typical scenarios that come up and the ethical way to handle them, practice writing out a typical curriculum for several ages, conflict resolution, developing a resume and portfolio, and interview success.

Comments from attendees included these: “Thank you for the time, caring and thoughtfulness that went into your Nanny Boot Camp today. You have helped all of us to step up a notch in our chosen profession. I value that you understand our genuine service and love for the children and families we serve while we carry on that service in a pretty hidden manner and are often not openly valued. I believe we all get that, and recognition, and appreciation are not our motives…. was kinda fun to hear that you ‘get it’.”

“Thank you for helping us serve that much better.”

“It’s great to hear from other nannies and real experiences. I appreciate your kind support to us. Your continued education and conferences equals professional nannies!” and “You’re making us feel valued as nannies. We nannies work pretty much alone and without support.”
We applaud the nannies who gave up their Saturday morning to increase their skills, and connect with us and others in their profession! These are people who keep on learning, growing and stretching to be the best of the best! Thank you for coming! We know there were many others who wanted to come but had problems with  scheduling, and we’ll host another class early next year.

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Jessica was downstairs with the children, ages 11 months and 2.5, when she heard an alarm go off upstairs once, then twice. She called 9-11 and police came and apprehended an intruder. Avery accidentally locked herself outside while the boys 2 and 4 were inside. She contacted the Grandma who lived nearby, who had a spare key. Kelly, one of our star nannies, noticed a man in the playground who didn’t seem to belong to the group and she called 911. The man was picked up, a registered child molester.

We don’t normally get tornadoes, hurricanes or flash floods in Phoenix but we have had dust storms, power outages and Arizona does have some slight earthquakes. You buy fire insurance and auto insurance, but have you discussed emergency situations with your nanny before they occur? What are your directives in the following situations: a stranger knocking at the door, power outage, car accident, flat tire, running out of gas, the alarm going off,  a runaway pet or  a child needing stitches?

Here are a some tips to insure your priorities are followed.

1. At your next monthly meeting, outline some possible scenarios and steps of action with your nanny
2. Consider getting CPR training yourself. When your nanny’s expires may be a great time to go together or simply review a youtube video.
3. Post a fire evacuation map with 2 ways to exit and a safe meeting spot outside the house. Nanny can practice Stop! Drop! Roll! with the children and crawling through the house in case of smoke.
4. Pool Safety. Fence the pool. No running around the pool. No children allowed outside without an adult.

Community Emergency. Carla, one of our veteran nannies, takes community preparedness classes and tells us the most important consideration is water. Electricity is what pumps the water when the generators go out, so on a long extended power outage there will be no water to flush the toilets, wash, cook or drink. We do have loss of power in Arizona occasionally. Think through all the scenarios if you have an extended outage. Don Sherman, a local Gilbert resident has free readiness workshops regularly. Check out his website, www.iwillprepare.com. Carla takes his workshops and is prepared to eat out of the refrigerator and then start canning what’s in her freezer.

Here’s what’s most important:

1. Water. Have a gallon of water per day per person for a period of two weeks. Have 5 gallon jugs stored.
2. Light. What will you do if the electricity goes out for an extended period of time? Do you have candles, and a way to light them? Candles can be set in a sink and burn safely. If you store batteries, recycle them periodically. Candles also bring a sense of warmth and comfort.
3. Food. Have canned food in the house that everyone will eat, like tuna, canned fruit, and cold cereal that the children will eat without milk.
4. Comfort food. Protein bars, hard candy (chocolate melts).
5. Fuel. A way to cook your food and a barbecue grill. Restaurants won’t have electricity and stores may be out of supplies and electricity. Their registers won’t run.  Have an extra propane tank or charcoal-plus extra  to boil water. Carla has almost 300# in her garage. You can get it on sale during holidays like 4th of July.
6. Fires. What will you do if the firefighter comes to your door and says “Get out! Your neighbor’s house is on fire.” Have a 72 hour kit, for food, medications, water, change of clothes, small first aid kit, a copy of important and irreplaceable documents and a current photo of you and everyone in the family in a ziplock bag.

This weekend, we’re conducting our Nanny Boot Camp covering the following topics. If your nanny hasn’t attended this 4 hour training session encourage her to get signed up. We have a few spaces left. Here’s the link 

Curriculum Planning & Scheduling
Child Development-Ages & Stages
Discipline & Building Self-esteem in Children
Physical Care & Safety
Nanny/Family Relationships
Professionalism: Ethics, Respect, and Responsibility
Situational Role Playing
Domestic Duties

Beth Weise 

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Caring Nannies Recently held a cutting edge one day training event in Paradise Valley with 37 nannies in attendance, greatly exceeding our expectations! We were expecting 8 but hoping for 20!  Nannies who had never experienced training geared to the private home environment were delighted and encouraged.

 Why do we need to train nannies? Doesn’t a good nanny already have the skills she needs to work successfully with children?

There is no other job as important as raising a child, your own or someone elses, and the informal home environment lends itself to parents and nannies thinking that ongoing training isn’t needed. It just comes naturally, right? However, research shows that nannies become skilled professionals when experience and a warm engaging personality is combined with knowleldge of how a child develops physically, socially, intellectually and emotionally plus creative ideas to make it happen.

The event was open to nannies throughout the community and many of the parents graciously paid the registration fee.

As in any profession, there is always more to learn, and it’s motivating to receive the appreciation for their critical impact in their unique role. The opportunity to network with  others in their field and exchange contact information is encouraging. Nannying can be isolating with no peers to talk to during the day.

With Kathy Rowe from Music Together, in a very hands on fun session, we experienced  how to incorporate music into the day–a huge brain boost to children. Jeremy King from Az Tutor and Life Coach laid out how to effectively develop responsibility and self-motivation, a seasoned Newborn Specialist explained the keys to babies and toddlers taking naps and sleeping through the night. Martha Rockwell, professional career coach and owner of A+Resumes, gave tips on how to find our dream jobs, and a panel of expert Home Managers discussed how to move from Nanny to Nanny Manager.

Breakfast and lunch were included as well as a goodie bag including a kid’s cook book. Fun prizes were raffled off including a large basket of essential safety devices from Childproofers USA, an hour of professional career and resume counseling from Martha, a make-over from Dephane Marcel from Salon Moda Fina in Scottsdale, and a Monster Repellant Spray from Fairytale Wishes. Lice Doctors generously sponsored our lunch.

The event was sponsored by Nanny Biz Reviews and was held in conjunction with National Week of the Young Child. Caring Nannies is tremendously encouraged by the success of this years training and is already at work planning our next training event this fall. At Caring Nannies, we are asking our caregivers to commit to two out of three training events per year, because we have experiencd the difference training makes.

Beth Weise
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