We are lucky to have family in the area who can help out with babysitting when needed. Specifically, we have Spanish-speaking family, la abuela, who helps to care for Sofía. In four years, we have never used a babysitter outside of the family. We try to be a self-sufficient unit. I stopped working my job as a teacher to stay home and care for our daughter, so I try to be careful to not need someone else to watch her.

But then I had to have foot surgery. This changed everything and I needed to hire a niñera to help take care of Sofía. I am on crutches and can’t drive, so I began the tedious task of looking for a niñera.

I had the best luck with care.com. I highly recommend it over other sites!

My preference of course was for a native Spanish-speaking niñera, but I didn’t make it a requirement for hire. When Sofía was younger, I would have made it a necessity, but now that she is more comfortable with her inglés, I left it at only a preference. What I really, really wanted was someone who would be young and energetic and take Sofía to do the physical activities that being in a cast prevented me from doing. In my area, that combination was challenging and coupled with last minute hiring, it leaned toward impossible!

SIXTY people applied to be our niñera for the summer! I was blown away by the large number of applicants since this was only a part-time position.  There were many times that I was overwhelmed with emotion because I thought I hit the jackpot of niñeras (local Kindergarten teachers looking for summer employment or college students, majoring in español, home for summer break) only to be let down by an extreme lack of professionalism or human courtesy. Several of the applicants accepted the job, we agreed to meet and then I never heard from them again! (I was particularly shocked when this happened with TWO school teachers that I had “hired”.)

¡No hay mal por bien no venga!

Luckily, I found the best niñera in the whole world!

The first afternoon she took care of Sofía, I called my husband and told him that I thought Sofía liked the niñera better than she liked us! The niñera was only 19 years old, but had the patience of a saint and an amazing insight on child behavior. She reminded Sofía to wash her hands before meals, chew with her mouth closed, and encouraged Sofía to clean up her room! The niñera wasn’t a native speaker of español, but she certainly was an excellent student in school. She used her español with ease and wasn’t shy to do so. (She even asked me new vocabulary words and then used them!) We feel extremely fortunate to have stumbled on such a competent person to take such good care of Sofía and that she does it en español!

For those of you who are looking or may be looking for niñeras in the future, here are my lessons learned:

1.  Make sure you hire a niñera who speaks a language with which your child is comfortable. It will help with separation anxiety.

2.  This process feels a lot like dating. If you don’t get an immediate response from someone, it probably means she changed her mind and is not interested. Move on to the next person.

3.  Text-messaging is IN. Emails and phone calls are out.

4.  Be direct and ask the applicant if she is available for the entire time you need help. I had to eliminate many applicants because they had too many summer vacation plans.

5.  Tell her what the job will entail (mine included light housework like cleaning up after playing and helping me moves things from here to there while I’m on crutches) and how much the job pays and ask if she is in agreement. (I like to do this via email before we speak so that I don’t waste my time.)

6.  Ask if the niñera is comfortable driving in the car with your child and/or comfortable driving your car.

7.   Treat the interviewing process like a CEO of a large company would: interview several applicants and tell them you will get back to them. This needs to be done quickly — niñeras get picked up rapidísimo — especially during high-demand seasons like the summer.

8.  Always meet in a public place for the first time.

9.  Contact references and access background checks if available.

10.  Have a back-up niñera.

11.  Have a Plan B if the niñera cancels right before she is supposed to care for your bebé on the first day.

12.  Once you hire the niñera, try to be home the first few times, making yourself invisible, in order to confirm that you hired the correct person. (We can never be too careful when it comes to the well-being of our bebés, cierto?)

13.  Relax, let go, and breathe!

One of the most anxiety-ridden moments in parenting is when mom and/or dad must go back to work and feel, not only unwarranted guilt from leaving their baby, but also a sense of loss of not being there for all those important moments that happen once in a lifetime.

Care.com, an online platform that “provides a trusted place for families and care providers to easily connect, share caregiving experiences, and get advice,” has created Karoo, an app to help families stay connected with their children’s special moments, no matter where they are or with whom.

In a nutshell, Karoo is a free photo and video app that’s special because it’s designed for caregivers to send updates about the day-in-the-life of the kids they care for and have those cherished photos, quotes and videos be captured on a timeline that will be visible only to those you invite. That means you can go as crazy as you like sharing with the abuelos any pics of every little adorable minutia your baby does during the day without anyone getting annoyed by it. Yeah, it happens! But not with Karoo because only those who want to be connected with your kids will connect.

Caregivers will also have at their disposal a tool that allows them to give you fun updates and reports of your kids’ daily happenings like meals, siestas, diaper changes, medications, etc. The same updates can be seen by all allowed on the timeline so you can also save time by having all be in-the-know, just like you are! Cool, huh?

And what about those oh-so-necessary playgroups? Connect with other parents in your area and you can all check out the local activities happening in your area or let each other know when you’re at the park for an impromptu meetup!

Sounds like this is for you? Then check out the Karoo video below and download on iTunes for free.

This post was inspired by my participation in a compensated program initiated by Women Online/TheMission List. All commentary and opinions are, of course, my own.

Photo by daviddesign

Recently we have received several emails and comments from English-speaking parents who are serious about giving their children the gift of another language. We count ourselves among the lucky that are able to speak a second language at home and almost innately pass it on to our kids. Even so, we know it’s hard work. So, you have no idea how much we respect parents that are making a conscious effort (because it is one) to work hard at creating language-learning opportunities from the get go.

One such example is our cyber-friend Karen who is learning Spanish while teaching it to her two sons. She’s so passionate about it that she writes a blog, Teaching Learning Spanish, where she shares all the Spanish language resources that she finds useful.  If you haven’t yet, we suggest you read a guest post she wrote for us a couple of months ago: Spanish Not Your Native Language? You can Still Raise Bilingual Kids.

Simona Montanari, Ph. D.

Today Simona Montanari gives some excellent advice on this topic. She’s an expert on early multilingual development and Assistant Professor of Child and Family Studies at California State University in Los Angeles. You can learn more about her here and read her previous inspiring answers to our reader’s questions here.

We Don’t Speak Spanish but We Want Our Child to Learn

Today’s question was sent by Jasmine Caruthers. She’s pregnant with her first child and, both she and her husband  know they want their child to learn Spanish even if they don’t speak it themselves.

“I am pregnant with my first child and both my husband and 
I speak English. However, I would like to raise my child to speak both 
English and Spanish. I was going to send my baby to a bilingual 
speaking school but I am having trouble locating any in Alabama. I 
really do not know how to go about doing this but it is important for 
my child to be bilingual. Do you have any advice on how to raise a 
child from an English speaking home, to speak Spanish? Thank you much.”

Dear Jasmine,

First of all, I think it’s great that you are so “enlightened” and convinced to raise your child bilingually even if both you and your partner are monolingual. There are a lot of people in the US who do speak two languages themselves, but are afraid of teaching them to their children for fear that they will lag behind in English or not learn it as well as other monolingual children. So, again, it’s great that you understand what a great gift it is to give your child two languages and see him grow bilingually.

The fact that neither you nor your husband speak Spanish makes your wish a bit more difficult to realize because you will truly have to rely on someone else for providing that extra language for your child. But I believe that your motivation and encouragement will make it possible.

I think the best way to go is to try to hire someone – a Spanish-speaking person – to spend time with your child in the early years (ideally birth to five and beyond). I am not sure how realistic this is for you but if you work and can afford a nanny/au pair, this would be the most successful strategy that I can think of. Be specific when you hire this person that you want him/her to speak Spanish to your child and not English. Barbara Zurer Pearson’s book “Raising a Bilingual Child” warns that many nannies end up using English with the children they watch, both because they want to practice English or because the child might speak English to them. You might want to be very firm and explain to your nanny that you are specifically hiring her/him to teach Spanish to your child, and so that no English should be used.

I used this strategy myself. When my first daughter was one and a half and my youngest was a newborn I hired a Spanish-speaking nanny to work for us for 36 hours a week. I was lucky because this woman spoke no English or Italian (which I speak to my daughters), so my daughters soon learned that they had to interact in Spanish with her. Today, at 5 and 3 and a half, my youngest daughter is pretty fluent in the language and the oldest speaks Spanish almost natively! In addition, they speak English (which they are picking up from dad and school) and Italian. It is truly amazing to see these little people move so easily back and forth between languages! And, for Spanish, I owe it all to my nanny. The new challenge will be for me to maintain Spanish-speaking opportunities for my daughters as they grow. But the nanny definitely planted the seeds.

If the nanny is out of the question, then you will have to rely on schooling. You should look everywhere in your area (as far as you are willing to commute) to find a bilingual daycare, preschool or school. Unfortunately, these are hard to find, but if you are willing to commute a bit you might increase your chances of finding one (I myself will start driving 26 miles a day this September to bring my oldest daughter to an Italian-English dual language school).

Finally, if even the school option is out, then you might have to scale down your dream of raising your child bilingually, although you can still help him/her learn some Spanish. You can do this by participating in Spanish mommy-and-me classes, by playing Spanish music and videos, perhaps by participating in Spanish-language play groups, etc. These activities won’t make your child bilingual but they might introduce him to the language, and therefore help him learn it later when new opportunities (i.e. Spanish language classes, Spanish-language programs) arise.

I wish all the best to you, your baby and your intent to raise him/her bilingually.

Simona Montanari, Ph.D., is located in the Los Angeles area. For more information or to schedule a phone/in person consultation contact her at smontan2@calstatela.edu.

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