MPP, with Christmas coming up, I wanted to know from other nannies and even parents what is an appropriate gift to get for the parents and children. Does the gift to the parent come from the nanny or do the children make something? Is there an appropriate dollar amount? - NannyTastic
14 comments:
In general I don't gift the parents.
I'll give a card.
I give inexpensive gifts to the children.
We do this every year. Gift down, not up. The parents should gift the nanny, and the nanny should gift the children. A card is sufficient for the nanny to give the parents.
Personally I love the pop up cards found in museum stores or on the net. It's a fun surprise for the parents, and not the usual card. MOMA had some beautiful ones last year, and they were available as singles on EBay.
Repeat, do not gift parents. They have enough stuff. And I don't approve of a free baby sitting night as a gift. Don't give away your professional services for free. You don't see accountants doing taxes for free, or bankers giving away money. Nannies shouldn't give away their services either, IMHO.
I gift birthdays, because I like birthdays, so it's a personal preference for me.. I do understand that gifting can be construed as bribing. There are definitely cultural pieces to this. For some, it would be inappropriate not to gift one's employer. Really depends on employer relationship I think. Most businesses have a way of gifting their clients. I see it more this way.
I always have my charges make a calender for their parents using hand/foot prints. July is an octopus, october is a spider, april is a butterfly, etc. Then I just take photos of their artwork and upload them to the correct month on shutterfly or whichever site is having a promotion going on. It's usually less than $10 and the kids are SO proud of their work when they see it all finished. Add a nice card and you've got the perfect cheap gift.
Lyn, I love the Calender idea! I am going to steal it!
I'm doing something similar to Lyn. I am just going to make a calendar full of pics of the baby. I usually agree with Village with "gift down, not up" but I can't stop myself from spending at least a couple of bucks on my boss-parents because I like them so much! Also, the baby's birthday is just a few weeks before Christmas so I'll probably just get her a little something for each, maybe books.
With my current charge (going on 3 yrs now w the family) I don't do a Christmas gift. He gets enough toys around the holidays anyway. His birthday is around jan. So I usually just get him a gift around then something around 30-40$.
I've never gotten anything from his parents for the holidays, (nbd though, a bonus would be nice but its a good family to work for so if that's the worst of my problems I'll take it haha) though this year I am finally getting a paid Christmas vacation (so a whole week off paid), but it's something I requested when we renewed our verbal contract last summer. I have a ton of pictures of/with their child though so I think I might put together a small scrapbook for then if I have the time this year :)
I always make a cute gift certificate for a date night for the parents. I make a gift with the child for the parents, but that is from him. The gift certificate is from Ellie and me.
I love this as a gift because it costs me nothing out of pocket. I basically go to their home with my daughter, watch the kiddos play, feed them some dinner, put Jack to bed, and Ellie hangs out with me just like she would at home. So this works for me. It doesn't take me away from my child because she is with me. The look on my employers faces when they get the certificate is great. They never get date nights. They are amazing people to work for and are always doing little extras for me and my daughter. Just this week, MB was at REI and when she got Jack a new nalgene water bottle, she got one for Ellie, too. Just because!
My bosses aren't very good about taking pictures or printing ones that they want..I started when my charge was first born, so I took tons of pictures and by Christmas I had hundreds and hundreds of pictures of his first 6 months of life..so I made them an album of them all. When he turned 1, I did it again with the 6 month-1 year pictures. They're so grateful and it's relatively inexpensive.
I have done the snapfish photo books for the parents for birthdays. I usually make it like a story book, written from the kiddos perspective (i.e. my twins "wrote" about how big they were getting, the crazy things they were starting to do, etc) with accompanying photos. I try to watch for snapfish to do sales, where they do like 3 for 40 I think?
I have tried a few different things, but I landed on doing a "family gift" for Christmas. One year it was a movie night kit-- a pretty hat box from Hobby Lobby filled with movie theater candy, popcorn, those red and white striped popcorn cups, some soda, etc. Another year it was homemade goodies and a couple board games. I try to make it about something they can all do together :)
In what profession does the employee give the employer a gift? I have always found it so difficult to find a suitable gift for the parents. I've given gift cards to only see them sitting around never used. Why bother? IMO, the kids are the real bosses ;-D- and fun and easy to buy for- so I always give them a gift- something we'd have fun doing or something we'd have fun learning about. However for families that are really wonderful I have taken all the photos I have though the year and made a scrape book- and also put together a fun family night kit- popcorn/DVD/game or a snowman kit.
In any profession where the employee appreciates the employer as a friend, not only as a boss. One of the daycares I worked at, everyone pooled their money and we bought our director a gift card for her birthday and another for Christmas. Same reason why I will be getting my boss-parents a token gift--because I like them, no other reason needed. If you don't want to give your boss one, that's fine too. Never feel obliged to give a gift for any reason, I would hope anyone would learn that at a very young age.
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