ego
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Anonymous
| I'm 46, my nanny is 35 and American born, and I feel like she's more of a co-worker rather than my employee. Bothers my ego. My youngest child has medical needs, so it would be very hard for me to trust anyone else with his care. I am definitely keeping the status quo and I'm grateful I've been able to keep my career despite my son's disease, so I'm fortunate. But, any advice for how to stay humble at home? |
Anonymous
| What exactly is it that you want? Do you want a nanny who feels more like an underling? Why is that important to you? Why are you not able to view the raising of your children as a collaboration between you and the many people who would be part of their lives between birth and graduation? You are the project manager of their childhood, but hardly the only important player. I’m not being snarky when I say that maybe you should explore this in therapy. Your feelings are surprising to you and it’s bothering you, so that seems to me like something you should talk to somebody about and examine what it is exactly that is upsetting you. |
Anonymous
| op: Maybe not an underling, but more respectful. I have a lot of respect for my boss. |
Anonymous
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Your boss more than likely has a lot of experience and worked hard to rise into that position. You are an underling.
A nanny is an experienced professional with prior knowledge about children you may not have. Yes, you pay her but you pay her for that experience. Yes, you are technically her boss but the dynamics are different as your nanny sees you in a home environment. I respect my NF but I show everyone respect. You respect your boss bc they are in a higher position than you. You think bc you have an employee that makes you a boss like yours but it isn’t quite the same. |
Anonymous
Honestly, you are paying your Nanny, and she should be listening to what you want. She is NOT your co-worker, she is your employee, and she needs to follow your orders, or seek employment elsewhere. |
Anonymous
| Career nanny here. The only dynamic that I am comfortable working in is a team setting with the parents. I have more knowledge and experience than they do. They have certain ideas and goals they want to see regarding their children. We work together to make sure the children are thriving. The respect shown is mutual. This is not an office environment and shouldn’t be viewed as such. If you need to feel powerful and boss someone around, hire a child without experience, work your way up in your career and be a demanding (and sectretly disrespected boss), become a police officer (some really go crazy with the power they have), etc. You shouldn’t want to feel more powerful and authorative with your nanny, that is an issue that you should seriously look into. |
Anonymous
Career nanny. While you think you are MORE of an expert than the parents, I am sure the parents disagree. They after all are responsible for their child, and know their child more (as it is theirs). |
Anonymous
Career nanny isn’t a sentence, FYI. And having significant experience rearing children absolutely gives me knowledge that the parents don’t have. Luckily for me, I will never be desperate enough to work for a family that doesn’t value that. |
Anonymous
A. A child is NEVER an it. Any pronoun denoting a person’s gender is appropriate, a pronouncing naming a child an object is NOT. B. OP has a nanny for a child with special needs. Experience counts. C. Many of us have more than a decade (maybe more than two or three) working with kids. Many ftp have never babysat or even held a child. Experience counts. D. Many of us spend more time with our charges than their parents do. We get the kids up, we put them to bed. Factor in weekend care, any some parents spend less than 10 hours with their kids weekly. I don’t say it to be mean or judgemental, just point out that we may know the kids NOW more than their parents do. They’ll know them better in the long run, which is what will matter then. |
Anonymous
I also have a younger child with medical needs, and we are very lucky to have found a nanny who loves and adores him. I view our nanny as a member of our team. My son LOVES her, and to be honest, he spends way more time with her than he does with me. He cries when I show up after work, and very casually says "bye bye" to me when I'm leaving in the morning. How do I feel about that? I'm thrilled that he loves his nanny so much, and that she is taking such good care of him that he feels like I can just walk away and he's in good hands. Our nanny takes him to doctors appointments (we meet her there to do the actual appointment), and by herself to his county preschool program. She is there when his therapists come to the house 2-3 times a week, and takes him to private therapy 3 times a week. She is certainly not my underling, but we discuss issues and we generally make a decision together. I ALWAYS seek her advice on issues, because she knows what she's talking about. Sure, she's my employee, and if I have issues with her, I bring them up and we solve them. If she has a schedule change or wants to change his therapy up or whatever, she brings it up to me and we solve it. But at the end of the day, we're there to help my son, and that's our goal. What would you change about your relationship with your nanny so that your ego felt better? |
Anonymous
| Mb here. I actually prefer that I don't feel like a boss. Ds ' nanny has been with us for years,. We are a team, not a boss/employee |
Anonymous
There are two definitions of respect, really. The first is to treat someone with dignity and consideration. The second is to treat someone with deference and obeisance. I don’t defer to every slight thing my boss says just because they are the child’s parent. If I think they are making the wrong choice but I know they have the facts then that is one thing but often parents don’t have all the facts either because they don’t have enough experience to have a basis for comparison or because they don’t spend enough/the right kind of time with their child to see things that are relevant. For example, a parent might not realize that a child is struggling socially at school because they spend time hanging at the house on weekends and don’t see the teacher or witness their kid interacting with peers. So if a parent said, “I don’t know why the therapist suggested social skills classes, he’s fine!” I would ‘t just defer to that, I would say, “Actually, whenever ai pick him up he is off by himself and the teacher mentioned that he has had a few social missteps since changing to the new school.” I’m not going to push my opinion, but my assumption is that you realize I am experienced with kids in general and an expert on certain aspects of your child that fall under my purview. |
Anonymous
Op, I have a few questions for you that might help us help you. What do you define as respect? Do you define it as treating someone like a human being, or maybe the way you treat them (if it is kindly)? Or do you define it as maybe keeping your head low, speaking when spoken to, and obeying commands with a “yes, ma’am/sir?” One more set of questions for you, op. What causes you to think your nanny is not being respectful enough? Is she blatantly rude? Could you perhaps give us an example of what she’s doing? |
Anonymous
| op: She makes decisions with my older kids about things they'll do on their days off without asking me, buys things for them on my credit card without checking with me. She drops the newspaper on the floor when she arrives in the morning so I have to pick it up. |
Anonymous
Respect is earned. |