Seeking Advice: Nanny Refuses to Drive Teen After Weed Incident

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The OP is totally delusional. There are plenty of people who will hire nanny.

I had a boss whose white, privileged son got charged with drug dealing in high school and all the money in the world couldn't drop the charges because the kid was that out of control. He is working retail when he works. Open your eyes OP

There are also many nannies that would prefer working with a baby/smaller kid than having to be a cook and chauffeur. I wouldn’t assume this nanny views her job as so easy. She can also get overtime if she cares for smaller kids whose parents work in person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The OP is totally delusional. There are plenty of people who will hire nanny.

I had a boss whose white, privileged son got charged with drug dealing in high school and all the money in the world couldn't drop the charges because the kid was that out of control. He is working retail when he works. Open your eyes OP

There are also many nannies that would prefer working with a baby/smaller kid than having to be a cook and chauffeur. I wouldn’t assume this nanny views her job as so easy. She can also get overtime if she cares for smaller kids whose parents work in person.

Even if the gig is as sweet as OP describes it, that itself should give her pause. What would cause someone with a good job, with caring and sharing employers, to draw this hard of a line?

Assuming that the OP believes her own hype, the nanny would only be drawing this hard of a boundary if she genuinely feared the teen would not stop carrying drugs or if she had reason to believe that her own personal circumstances or that of a family member were especially vulnerable.

I think this ought to provoke some introspection on the original posters part.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I was hoping for more helpful responses rather than attacks on our parenting. I think the lesson learned is to not be as open about personal family issues with the nanny and to treat her more like an employee.

The resolution we have come up with is that the nanny will only drive our child to school, activities, and other non-social events. After the teen's punishment period, if our teen wants to go to a friend's house or make a stop somewhere, we will take care of it, or the teen can walk.

To clarify, we are very generous with pay and benefits. Most nannies typically handle full-time care of small children, crying babies, etc., for 40+ hours a week. In our case, since the kids are older, the nanny only needs to cook, do laundry, and drive, which takes up much less time, but we still pay her a full-time salary. It may be that the nanny hasn’t seen what’s out there, so she might be short-sighted about her good situation.

Additionally, we are very open, caring, and sharing, which again, was likely an issue here.

Posting here has not been helpful. I'm not sure what judgmental people are on this platform, but it's sad to see such negativity. With the prevalence of teens and marijuana, especially since it's been legalized and downplayed in our society, I think many of you will encounter similar situations. I would be more than happy to give helpful advice rather than tear down parents without understanding the personal situation.

The lesson learned is to keep things professional between employer and employee. Personal family issues should be kept within the family. More disclosure and openness aren’t always the best approach, even if you feel close to your nanny; she’s still an employee.

OP, I think you would have received more sympathy about the situation if you had not referred to the nanny as paranoid. This minimizes everything including the nanny’s concerns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are currently facing a challenging situation with our nanny and could use some advice. Our nanny's primary responsibility is to drive our kids to practice and school. Recently, we discovered that our teen had weed in his possession. Our nanny also found out that he had the weed in the car while she was driving.

Understandably, she is now very concerned about driving our teen. She fears that if they get pulled over and he has drugs on him, she could be at risk of getting arrested.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation? How did you handle it? Any advice on how we can reassure our nanny or is this an overly paranoid nanny?

You can't and she is absolutely within her rights. Your idiot son put her in a possibly bad of getting arrested. He can walk or take the bus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Whether this kid has used marijuana “a few” (unlikely, since he’s keeping a supply and carrying it around) or many times, the fact remains that his behavior and the fact that he apparently can’t be trusted to not have or use marijuana crosses the threshold to being objectively symptomatic of a problem.

This is a great point. I am the parent of teens, and I'm not assuming my kids have never tried marijuana or alcohol. However, trying it usually means you are in a social situation and someone else (a more frequent drug user) shares it. In this scenario, OP's son IS the more frequent drug user who carries around a supply of marijuana.

How do you know it was “a supply” and not half a leftover joint or something? This whole thread is like weird fan fiction from parents who want to think their special snowflakes would never and that OP must be a horrible mom if this happened. And obviously she is uninvolved if she needs help with childcare over the summer.

But please continue on with the assumptions only bad kids with checked out parents ever have marijuana on them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would do a better background check on your nanny if I were you.

OP'd as in had the weed not the nanny. You and OP are trying to put the onus on the nanny instead of OP's delinquent druggie. Dollars to doughnuts, her son is doing other drugs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the nanny is let go I hope she lets the parents of all the teen’s friends as well as his private school know what happened. She should also be filing for unemployment. The OP has created unsafe working conditions for her at no fault of her own. Hope this keeps Larlo out of Ivy League and the nanny isn’t harmed financially.

If this isn’t a troll post it makes me wonder how the drug use came to light to the family and the nanny.

Not to get into it but we have all our nannies sign ndas it's pretty standard.

What are you hiding?