Hello.
My name is Tonia and I was born and raised in a small town near Hamburg in Germany.
You might want to know how a girl from Germany ended up in Brandon of all places. Well, it is actually a cute story. My mother is German and my father Canadian. He is originally from Flin Flon but moved to Winnipeg for university. Back then, my mom was not happy with the university programs in Germany had to offer and was always very intrigued by the idea of getting her education in a different country. Since she had always loved Canada, she decided to go to university here.
That was how my parents met and I ended up being half German and half Canadian :). After having finished their university degrees in Winnipeg, they moved to Brandon where my parents got married and my older sister Kyra was born. At one point my dad wanted to move to Germany because he wanted to learn the language and live there for a while. As life is full of surprises my parents have now been living in Germany for the past 22 years.
After I completed my International Baccalaureate in Germany, I originally had planned to work for a year as an au pair in North Carolina where we have family friends. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so I decided to continue my education in Canada. I wanted to get to know my other “half”, I wanted to find out what it was actually like living in the country most of my family was from and not just visiting. So in 2012 I moved to Brandon and enrolled at Brandon University.
Now most importantly, I would like to tell you about my experiences with children and why I would love to work as a nanny. First of all, I have two little brothers and my youngest brother was only born when I was already 10 years old so I helped my mom out a lot when he was still a baby and a toddler, bringing him to bed, changing his diapers, looking after him in the afternoon, reading him stories, etc. Later on, I also started getting involved in babysitting when I was around 13 years old. I babysat children from the ages of 2 to 8 years, sometimes slightly older or younger than that. I would babysit at least once a week until I moved to Canada when I was 19.
Once I started university unfortunately, I was too busy to pick up babysitting again. All I do at the moment is that I look after my 12 year old cousin every once in a while.
I really miss spending time with children though and I’ve realized in the last couple of months that life without little ones around is lacking something really important. I love children because they are very special and they have their very own way of looking at life. They are still so natural, open and honest about their feelings and those feelings are extremely important because they truly come from the heart which makes it so easy to hurt them if you are not careful. I believe that childhood experiences lay the foundation for how a person later on in life deals with different challenges like school, work and relationships.
Making children happy, also makes me happy. Spending time with kids is one of my biggest passions and I find it deeply satisfying watching them grow and become their own little person as it is incredibly fascinating.
So, if you are looking for someone to make your children feel appreciated, loved, happy and safe for when you won't be able to be there, I would be the person to do exactly that.
I am very much looking forward to meeting you and your children soon, Tonia

• Education: Graduate degree