A newsletter for Parents, Nannies and Agency Owners
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Vol. 1, No. 1 November 1999
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Deborah Smith, Editor, Parents With Nannies, Inc. 

This newsletter is distributed by subscription only. If you
wish to unsubscribe, you can find instructions at the end of
this newsletter.
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IN THIS ISSUE
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> Welcome
> Excerpt from "Like A Second Mother" by Barbara Blouin
> A Safety Guide, protecting your children online and off
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Welcome to our very first edition of NannyNetNews. I hope 
this is the first of many, many more issues to come. 

My name is Deborah (Deb) Smith. I am a former
Nanny, now stay at home mom, and the founder of 
Parents With Nannies. The reason I chose the name 
Parents With Nannies (and like it so much) is that the 
name has two meanings. Yes, the most obvious is
"Parents who employ nannies." But the second, less obvious
way to look at the name is "parents and nannies working WITH
each other as partners so to speak."

This is the recurring theme of the website and of our
discussion group. Nannies and Parents acting as partners in 
the caring and nurturing of children. This is why you will
see separate articles in each newsletter for nannies, for parents and
sometimes even for agency owners. We are all in this together,
and it never hurts to see things from someone else's point
of view.

Again, I hope you enjoy your subscription to NannyNetNews. 
Please feel free to share your ideas for new articles or
comments on articles you have read here.
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"If I can help somebody as I travel along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or a song,
If I can show somebody where they're going wrong,
Then my living has not been in vain."

"Like a Second Mother" by Barbara Blouin is a collection 
of oral histories, memoirs and photographs compiled to honor 
loving caregivers of children. There is no other book of its kind. 
The author interviewed over 40 adults who grew up in wealthy 
families and who feel immense gratitude to the nannies and 
housekeepers who gave them love and nurturing -- always
from the heart. The following excerpt describes one such 
wonderful nanny and the parent who adores her.


DIANA BARRETT: I had a lonely and confusing childhood. I was
an only child, and I lived with my mother in New York City. 
My parents were divorced when I was very young; I never knew
my father. My mother didn't want to hang out with me much, 
so she hired a string of Mexican maids to take care of me-
one worse than the other. In all fairness, Mother had never had
much of a family life herself; she was sent off to boarding 
school at the age of four. We went through maids like 
handkerchiefs. I can remember really loving one nanny when I 
was about six or seven. But as soon as it was clear to my 
mother that I really cared about my nanny, she fired her. I 
mean, it was instantaneous. Other than that, I never bonded 
with any of them, and my childhood was very catch-as-catch-can.

My mother was the kind of mother who was never up in the
morning. She always slept late, and a maid would make breakfast
for me. I would give Mother a perfunctory good-bye kiss on my 
way to school. I don't remember seeing much of her after school,
either, and no one was interested in my homework or what I was
doing in school. My mother really didn't have a clue about my 
life. She used to make me a minute steak and a sliced tomato 
salad for dinner. I had that about five nights a week; she would 
just produce a meal and then go out.

Mother got into a relationship with my stepfather when
I was four, and they went out virtually every night. I was 
left alone-literally alone-at night. Sometimes there was 
a maid around, but if a maid had just been fired, the doorman
was told to keep an eye on me. I remember putting out an 
electrical fire in a plug when I was about nine. Being left
alone like that had a huge impact on me. I remember thinking:
I will never do this to my children!

I was sent to boarding school when I was thirteen 
because my mother was going away. It was a disaster; I only
lasted six months. I was sent to boarding school again when
I was fourteen, and that was a disaster too; I got myself 
kicked out. Then I was sent to another boarding school in Paris
for a year when I was fifteen (there's a pattern here), and 
that I loved. I finished high school in New York. I guess what
I got out of all that were my marching orders: I was determined
that I was never going to replicate the pattern with my own 
children. 

After a brief marriage when I was twenty, I married Bob Vila 
when I was twenty-eight, and I got pregnant shortly after that.
Even before Christopher was born, I knew that I would want to 
go on working, and of course, I sometimes felt guilty about that 
decision. I think mothers always feel guilty about working. You 
have such a strong pull to these little babies that even the 
thought of not taking care of them all the time is tremendously 
conflictual. But at the same time, I think you know what your 
needs are. And I knew that while I didn't want to be away from 
my child full time, there was a certain intellectual part of me 
which had to be dealt with. That's just who I am, and that's who 
I always will be. So there was never any question about staying
home and parenting my children one hundred percent of the time. 
The challenge, for me, was to try to figure out what aspects of the 
parenting role I was willing to give away.


Go here to read the rest of the story of Diana

Order the Book
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A Safety Guide
Protecting Your Children Online and Off 
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Hi all, 

Some of you have written and asked why there wasn't a new
article. Well, the answer is simple and it is painful. I work
with a group called forthekids. The purpose is to help return 
children to their homes. Unfortunately, one of the children 
that were missing was found dead. And while I had never met 
her, the death of any child hurts. I really didn't feel like 
writing at all. But I do now. Today I am going to provide 
some simple tips to keeping your children safe. I will be 
giving some tips not just for your home life, but online 
as well. 

ONLINE: 

1. There are plenty of software packages that can track what 
your children say online, such as cyberpatrol and netnanny. 
The drawback is that there are ways around them. The best 
security to safeguard your children online is a simple and 
free one: SUPERVISE THEM. I work at an ISP as a supervisor 
and when our members ask which program I use, I tell them 
the one I was born with, ME! If my daughters are online, I 
am here. They don't know the passwords to even start my 
computer. 

2. Something you need to let your children know when in a 
chat room is that some of the people in there are LIARS. 
There will always be people in chatrooms who are saying they 
are children when they aren't. There have been children 
abducted when they thought they were talking to another teen 
and decide to meet. Turns out the other "teen" was a pedophile. 
Some will say that telling your children that there are liars 
in the chatroom is giving them the wrong impression of people, 
but it is a fact. The Internet can be a wonderful place. 
you can learn about just about any subject and communicate 
with people from other countries that you would never talk 
to otherwise. But it is also a dangerous place. Predators 
have learned that innocence can be exploited using it. 

3. A good way to know when your children are online is to set 
what is called a bios password. What that it is, is a password 
box pops up before windows even starts to load. If you don't 
know the password, windows will not start, which means no 
Internet. If you don't know how to set a bios password, ask 
someone local to you who does. 

4. Another good option is to not save the password for your 
Internet connection. That way, it will have to be entered 
everytime allowing you to know when the Internet. 

Does it sound like I am paranoid? In some ways yes! I have made 
the "Internet" my job. I have been doing tech support for a while 
and have heard more horror stories than I care to admit. 

Real life: 

1. Have your children fingerprinted. That almost any police 
station will do if you request it. 

2. Take photos of your children every month. That way you 
will have current pictures if they are needed. 

3. Teach your children a password that will let them know 
that someone is safe. 

4. Ask the local police station if there are any safety courses 
that your children can go thru. It is never to early to teach 
your children safety. 

5. Tell your children that if someone does try to grab them, 
YELL!! Yell and scream and kick. Teach them that if a stranger 
tries to grab them to make a scene. 

6. Go to their school, talk to the teachers and principal. Ask 
what security measures they have. Do they make sure the children 
get on the bus? Do they require proof before your children will 
be released to someone else? 

These may sound like simple ideas, but we don't do it. We say, 
oh that type of thing will never happen here. Well, guess what, 
it can happen anywhere. It can happen in the smallest town or the 
biggest city. It is OUR job to keep our children safe. Contact 
your senators and congressmen, ask them to pass laws that protect 
our children, not only around your town, but online as well. Tell 
them you want tougher laws that protect our children before they 
are victims. Tell them you want laws that protect the victims and 
not the criminals. Am I wound up right now? YES!!! Nothing will 
ever change unless WE make it. 

I am gonna end this now, but I want to leave you with this website 
http://members.tripod.com/Forthekids/index.html Please pass it on 
to everyone you know. We can all help. The final thought is as always. 
Remember to let your children know that you love them. If you have 
any disagreements with this article, send me your feedback at 
wrhawk65@ctel.net

Love your children and teach them right. 

Good-bye for now

Brian 
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Brian Jacob Rogers, age 34, lives in Winthrop, Maine and is employed 
as an Internet Technician. More importantly, he is the proud father 
of Hope, age 11 and Courtney, Age 9. 
Reprinted with permission by Childfun.com
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