Technology is terrific. Here’s The Elite Nanny Company guide to four of our favourite apps and why we think they are ideal for nannies and families.
Toilet Finder
It’s the best we’ve found on the international stage. It’s great to have a toilet locating app when you’re at home, but what about when the family takes a holiday abroad? We favour an app that works just as well in Paris as in London, that finds toilets in Florida and Florence as well as Farnborough. This is a free app that deals with those emergencies when a little one suddenly ‘needs to go’ and you don’t know the area you’re in. First it suggests publicly available bathrooms in your vicinity. Secondly it tells you whether or not it’s free to use that particular toilet. While we know that toilet issues shouldn’t dominate life they really do. If you’re a nanny, and having an app that takes care of part of the problem is a blessing.
Cozi Family Organizer
We are going to have a bit of a whine about how all the great apps are American. This one is no exception. If you can get used to calling your nappies ‘diapers’ you’ll be fine. What we do like about this app is that you can schedule set for everybody in the house. So appointments, days off, after school clubs etc are easy to share. Then there’s a family journal section where ‘milestones and memories’ can be listed. Which is a great way to do handovers to a temporary nanny if that becomes necessary. It’s also wonderful for recording details of little friends and their food allergies. So nanny can update Baxter’s new best friend carrying an epi-pen for peanut allergy. It’s a free app, with paid add-ons, and we’ve learned to grit our teeth about the Americanisms for the clarity and ease of use that Cozi brings.
Barefoot World Atlas
There are just days when you need something to distract a child. Or times when, through no fault of your own, you end up stranded with the children somewhere there’s absolutely nothing to do. Long motorway journeys are a case in point. But our nannies have been stuck in yurts in torrential rain, in airports at 2am. Possibly worst of all – queuing. And at those times it’s great to have a high quality app that will both amuse the children and educate them. Enter The Barefoot World Atlas. Top quality images with 3D rotation of objects based on Royal Geography Society data. Excellent narration from a BBC presenter and such good presentation that kids really don’t care that they are being educated.
Baby Connect
A seriously solid app. Which could have been designed for parents who have to spend time away from young children. Useful up to the age of about three. Baby Connect allows everybody in the loop to track a little one’s growth and development. The great plus of this app is that when you input data on growth, moods, doctor’s visits etc. It keeps them in chart form so you can instantly see patterns and nanny can share the data with parents and vice versa. As a milestone recorder it’s fantastic, over and above that. It’s a brilliant tool to see if a young child has behaviour patterns (like not sleeping at certain times/days) that can be addressed.