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[quote=Anonymous]I am a nanny who has worked with at least one parent in the home for all of my families for the last 15 years.  This is 100% on you and  you are the only one who can fix it.  Of course your kids are going to want you to answer their random questions or show you a drawing they made, or get a hug, or complain that the nanny said no to XYZ, or whine that their sibling is being mean or or or…

The problem is that you are expecting your kids and your nanny to both have and enforce the same no specific list of acceptable reasons to disrupt your day.  The kids have no idea what is and isn’t acceptable and the nanny might understand if you explained it but she is probably concerned that if she keeps the kids from you and they get upset then you will be mad at HER.

So 
1) You can’t have wishy-washy rules about when they can interrupt and when they can’t 
2) You need to have clear communication with kids and with nanny about when you are available and when you are not
3) YOU have to be the one to enforce it, at lease at first, because the kids have learned that you are the one who allows the interruptions.

All that said, I get that you wish you could be there for your kids, but something you need to mourn and accept is that working during the hours your kids are home and awake means that you are not available to them on any random schedule.  What you CAN do, however is build in predictable times to be available on a schedule that works for them and you and you can connect with them during your work hours and give them some time to let you know if they have something going on that they need or want your help with.

What that might look like is you taking your lunch break in two parts and having one of those parts be the first half hour when your kids get home from school, so you can sit and have a snack with them while the nanny cleans our their backpacks or starts a load of laundry or something.  Build it into the day, so that the kids know that that is their window to ask for more of your time if they feel like they need it, but also that the rest of the time they need to ask the nanny or wait until you are off for the day.

As for sick kids, you can certainly decide that you are going to handle sick kids yourself, but just know that generally that will result in kids being “sick” more often for attention from mom, and with multiple kids, the days they are “sick” plus the days they are legitimately sick, plus routine doctor and dentist visits…it can add up quickly.  Think about what you actually want to and can truly commit to, bearing in mind the problems it will cause if one kid is better at faking it and gets more attention, etc.  Lots of ways this can go sideways.  It might work better to do something like if they are sick you will check on them X times a day for Y minutes between meetings so they know you will be around but also you aren’t locked in to skipping work every time someone gets a cold.
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