Am I just a terrible nanny?

[Anonymous]

I am a nanny for a 3 year-old and a 6-month old. I feel very attached to both of them, but the 3 year-old is a MEGA handful (her parents say this all the time and constantly commend on me on being able to "deal" with her with patience). But at least once a week, she gets into a massively awful mood where she'll start saying atrocious things about me (like that she hopes my brother and sister, who are young, die or calling me a bitch), or do something like purposefully throwing a tantrum to try to wake up her brother, or I'll tell her nicely to "wait a minute" or not do something and she gives me this awful defiant look and does it anyway, then laughs at me and calls me stupid when I tell her she needs to listen when I tell her to do something.

She's not like that all the time. It's a small percentage of the time. but when she goes into those moods she's a totally different kid. Usually she's very sweet and she balances out those awful moments by saying things like "you're the best babysitter ever! I love you! I want you to come here every day! I get so happy when I see you and you're here! I'm having so much fun with you!" She'll just fly into one of those moods with no warning and it's always surprising the amount of hatred that she's able to level at me.

I feel like i'm a bad nanny because I get frustrated when she gets into those moods. It's like a rage, there's just no stopping her. I have to close my eyes and count to 10 and take deep breaths so I don't raise my voice. I feel like if I was good with kids I would never have to calm myself down and I feel guilty about this. I have to remind myself she's only 3, even if she insults me like an intelligent adult. Am I just a bad nanny, not cut out for this?

[Anonymous]

Nope - you're human, dealing w/ a typically mood swinging 3 year old. I bet every mother and nanny on here can empathize!

[Anonymous]

Let me guess. You are not her first nanny.

[Anonymous]

You are not a bad nanny, just a human being-pretty sure anyone would be shook up by a three year old calling them a bitch. You are allowed to have emotions, positive or negative, about your charges and not feel guilty about it. It does sound like there are some major emotional and behavioral issues going on here that you need to talk to MB/DB about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope - you're human, dealing w/ a typically mood swinging 3 year old. I bet every mother and nanny on here can empathize!

Sorry, but this is definately not three year old typical or normal behavior. There are severe issues here, OP. How much history do you know?

[Anonymous]

Not her first nanny, but her last one was with her for over a year and went on to be a nurse. She had a few before that as a baby, two were fired because they just had no infant skills and one also left after 6 months. She didn't have a nanny for close to 8 months, so I'm not sure if she was this way before. The parents say she's even worse with them. I think they are nice parents, they yell a little too much and it doesn't work on her but they don't spoil her or anything. I think she's just a hard kid and always has been.

I always just feel like I'm struggling with her and that makes me feel guilty. When people are like "I never feel the need to yell at a child" it makes me feel bad, because there are many times that I want to raise my voice to make her stop (even though I know it won't work).

[Anonymous]

Also, she's really well behaved most of the time. She goes into time out whenever I tell her to (unless she's in a mood), and stays quietly until I tell her to get out. But another thing she's started is being aggressive with her baby brother. She actually bit his leg and left a mark that stayed for a couple days. She got in MASSIVE trouble, and I don't think her parents go too easy on her at all.

[Anonymous]

A three year old calling an adult a bitch is weird. Where did she learn to do that, and in what world does a child call an adult names? Something is off.

[Anonymous]

Agreed that there may be behavioral or parenting issues here but it sure doesn't sound like there are nannying issues.

And the kid may just be a tough kid (though the name calling is a worrisome indicator of what she's hearing perhaps around the home.)

[Anonymous]

So she's three and has had a least five nannies? I may very well be the only one on this forum with this opinion, but that in itself explains a lot of where these issues may be coming from. If these nannies have all been "primary caregivers", this poor child has already suffered a ton of stress.

Sounds like serious attachment issues. How long have you been there?

[Anonymous]

You are not a bad nanny, just a human being-pretty sure anyone would be shook up by a three year old calling them a bitch. You are allowed to have emotions, positive or negative, about your charges and not feel guilty about it. It does sound like there are some major emotional and behavioral issues going on here that you need to talk to MB/DB about.

Thanks. Mom works at home so she hears it all and she's not at all unaware of the 3 year-old's behavior (which is apparently much worse when I'm not around).

She usually flies into a mood when her mom comes down for lunch and hangs around to talk to me for too long, but the worst moments have had nothing to do with her mom, and usually me saying "No, I can't play right now, I have to do something for your brother first and then we'll play". Maybe it's sibling jealousy, since most of her moods seem directly related to that. Something that helps - sometimes - is when I say "I can't play right now, I have to do something for your brother, do you want to help?" but sometimes she doesn't feel like it and just gets mad anyway.

I've been trying to get her to interact more positively with her brother and help me with doing things for him, because I notice her mom will nag her whenever she goes near him "Be careful! be gentle! He's just a helpless little baby, you can't hug him like that!" If it's been like that from the beginning, that could be why she started getting so aggressive. But if her mom started acting like that because the 3 yo gets aggressive, I don't blame the mom.

I've made very annoyed faces behind the kids back and if they had a nanny cam I'd totally hate for anyone to see that...I feel like it's pretty petty. I also wouldn't want anyone see me have to close my eyes and take a deep breath. I'm afraid it'd look like I could hit their kid at any minute.

[Anonymous]

So she's three and has had a least five nannies? I may very well be the only one on this forum with this opinion, but that in itself explains a lot of where these issues may be coming from. If these nannies have all been "primary caregivers", this poor child has already suffered a ton of stress.

Sounds like serious attachment issues. How long have you been there?

I hadn't thought of it honestly. But from ages 1-3, she's only had me and one other lady - however, for a while she went to a woman's house where the kids basically ran amuck and did whatever they wanted. So yeah, 3 caregivers is still a lot.

I've been there a little over 3 months now and she's definitely gotten worse as time goes on. Attachment issues to who?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You are not a bad nanny, just a human being-pretty sure anyone would be shook up by a three year old calling them a bitch. You are allowed to have emotions, positive or negative, about your charges and not feel guilty about it. It does sound like there are some major emotional and behavioral issues going on here that you need to talk to MB/DB about.

Thanks. Mom works at home so she hears it all and she's not at all unaware of the 3 year-old's behavior (which is apparently much worse when I'm not around).

She usually flies into a mood when her mom comes down for lunch and hangs around to talk to me for too long, but the worst moments have had nothing to do with her mom, and usually me saying "No, I can't play right now, I have to do something for your brother first and then we'll play". Maybe it's sibling jealousy, since most of her moods seem directly related to that. Something that helps - sometimes - is when I say "I can't play right now, I have to do something for your brother, do you want to help?" but sometimes she doesn't feel like it and just gets mad anyway.

I've been trying to get her to interact more positively with her brother and help me with doing things for him, because I notice her mom will nag her whenever she goes near him "Be careful! be gentle! He's just a helpless little baby, you can't hug him like that!" If it's been like that from the beginning, that could be why she started getting so aggressive. But if her mom started acting like that because the 3 yo gets aggressive, I don't blame the mom.

I've made very annoyed faces behind the kids back and if they had a nanny cam I'd totally hate for anyone to see that...I feel like it's pretty petty. I also wouldn't want anyone see me have to close my eyes and take a deep breath. I'm afraid it'd look like I could hit their kid at any minute.

Sometimes, the only thing you can do is close your eyes and breath (I've definitely had to go as far as leave the room during particularly rough tantrums). If you have inklings that there might be nanny cams, you should speak up-it's pretty inappropriate for the parent's to have them there without your knowledge. You also need to have a serious conversation with the parents about the behaviors and figure out some ways that you can help each other to deal with the situation.

[Anonymous]

"Sometimes, the only thing you can do is close your eyes and breath (I've definitely had to go as far as leave the room during particularly rough tantrums). If you have inklings that there might be nanny cams, you should speak up-it's pretty inappropriate for the parent's to have them there without your knowledge. You also need to have a serious conversation with the parents about the behaviors and figure out some ways that you can help each other to deal with the situation."

Thank you, it's good to know I'm not alone. They haven't really said anything that made me think they have them, I just sort of assume everyone does but I wouldn't want to ask and make me look guilty. In fact, the mom has said many times that even though she works at home, she totally tunes us out and has no idea what's going on during the day - that one could go either way. There was also an incident where the dog ate two diapers whole in the playroom and I caught her in the act, and the mom was so thankful because she said "no one would have ever known", so they definitely don't have one in the playroom...

not that it really matters. Like I said, I'd just hate them seeing me having to calm down, because I think we all know that most moms and dads have a much higher expectation for their nannies to be perfect than themselves and they'd probably like it if I never had to do that...does that make sense?

[Anonymous]

OP, you can google:

"caregiver attachment"
"parent attachment"
"infant attachment"

(Btw, we're not talking about "attachment parenting" here, which is a completely different thing.)

There's tons of research about how critical it is for very young children (especially 0-3) to maintain safe and secure bonds with their primary caregivers. We don't like to talk about it much because we love the work we do. Parents here often get into spastic attacks about it and immediately get super defensive.

How many hours a week do you usually do with them?