• Nannies must be skilled in a variety of areasgramma_baby11 image by kana109 from Fotolia.com
  
  Nannies care for children within a family's own home. They provide the children with meals, physical care and daily activities. The nanny might live in the home full-time or be an employee who is present only during the parents' absence. Nanny jobs can be full-time, part-time, live-in or live-out. Therefore, the nanny must be skilled in a variety of areas including cooking, cleaning, childcare and first aid. He or she must be assertive, sensitive and flexible. Because so much is expected of nannies, the field can be competitive. Families look for experience and proper preparation. Though there is no formal education necessary to become a nanny, there is a variety of means to gain the many skills a nanny needs. (See Reference 1.)
  
  

Duties of a Nanny

• Nannies may be live-in, working about 50 hours, five days a week. The employing family generally provides the nanny with living quarters.The family may also provide the nanny with a telephone, a car, and gas money. Duties are varied and may include entertaining the children, supervising their morning routine, such as dressing and teeth brushing, preparing meals, doing their laundry, cleaning their play area and transporting them to and from school. The nanny must always be available to provide loving support and affection, acting essentially as a third parent. A nanny might also be live-out, arriving at an employer's home in the morning and leaving in the evenings, but the duties are largely the same. (See Reference 1.)
  
  

Informal Instruction

• Though a formal education is not necessary to become a nanny, many courses can make someone who wants to become a nanny more competitive in the field. First, you might become CPR and First Aid Certified. To do this, you can check your local Red Cross website and enroll in one of their offered CPR or First Aid classes. Often parents feel safer if the nanny is certified in these areas in case of an emergency. You can also take basic home economics or cooking courses in vocational or adult education schools. In addition, you can gain experience and references by babysitting for neighborhood families or working as an Au Pair. An Au Pair is a person from another country who lives with a family and helps with domestic tasks like cooking, cleaning and childcare, sometimes receiving a small allowance for personal use. (See Reference 1.)
  
  

Formal Education

• You can take become a Certified Professional Nannycollege, londres, uk image by Jerome Dancette from Fotolia.com
  
  There are also many professional nanny schools all over the world. These schools offer a variety of courses that a nanny might need for career advancement. The Northwest Nanny Institute, for example, provides courses that allow a person to become a CPN, a Certified Professional Nanny. NNI is licensed by the State of Oregon as a private career school and is approved by the U.S. Department of Education as a Title IV School. At NNI, students are provided 560 hours of classroom instruction. According to the NNI website, the classes include: Child Development (Cognitive, Social and Emotional, Physical, Language), Activities (Music, Art, Science, Literature, Play), Life Skills, Household Management, Etiquette, Safety, Health, Nutrition, Family Dynamics, Interpersonal Relations, Infant and Childcare, and more. Students also receive 249 hours of practical instruction. They receive supervised "hands-on" experience in familial and day care settings. There, students learn to apply their newly learned skills to plan and conduct appropriate activities for infants and children. (See Reference 2.)