Reply to S/O - do parents seriously think any nanny would purposely upset a charge they love to prove a point

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Reply to "S/O - do parents seriously think any nanny would purposely upset a charge they love to prove a point"

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[quote=Anonymous]I wrote the post you're referring to, and I shouldn't have used the word intentional. I apologize for that.

I've been a nanny, I'm now a parent who employs one.  I think there is a common dynamic in situations where kids are involved, whether it's between a nanny and a parent, or between two parents, where something stops working, and rather than looking at it as a situation that needs to be reworked, one adult places all the blame on the other.

I'll give an example from my own marriage.  When I was a SAHM, my preschooler attended preschool that started at 9 five days a week, and we had a routine that worked to get to school on time.  When my husband and I decided to add swimming lessons on Saturday, I chose a 9 a.m. time, because it seemed consistent.  It should have worked.  We also agreed that Saturday mornings would be my morning off, and my husband would get my preschooler and their infant sibling up and dressed and fed and off to swimming lessons while I had a chance to sleep in.

But it didn't really work that way.  My husband was much less efficient than I was in the morning.  He didn't automatically do the things I did that speeded things up, like grabbing some diapers from the changing table to stick in the backpack, so he'd have to make another trip.  And he'd do things like promise my preschooler pancakes when it would have been clear to me that we needed to move fast and this was a day for frozen waffles.  And my preschooler was less efficient in the morning, because they loved Daddy's attention so they'd linger and ask a million questions.  And every week one of two things would happen.  Either my kid would be a couple minutes late for swim lessons, which would lead to tears and a difficult transition, or I'd get frustrated because I could hear what was going on, and I'd get out of bed and hurry things along, and then feel resentful the rest of the day because I didn't get my extra sleep, and I had to play the bad guy.  In my mind, this was a problem that happened because my husband was doing the morning "wrong".

But it wasn't just a problem with my husband, it was also a problem that happened because we had a routine that didn't work, and my kid was the one getting hurt, because they weren't enjoying the time with Daddy, or the swimming lessons, and they weren't learning how to swim.  As soon as I shifted the problem in my mind from a "my husband is wrong" to "this routine isn't working", the solution was obvious, and we moved my kid to a later lesson time.

In your case, you have a 3 year old who can't tell time, and who wouldn't now that their mother's arrival time varies if there wasn't a routine that was drawing their attention to it.  I think you're blinded by your frustration with the parent, and so you want to see this as 100% a "mom" problem, when part of the solution seems to be to fix the routine so that the preschooler's attention isn't drawn to the fact that their mom's arrival time varies.  I also think that if you're feeling annoyed at the mother, and wish you could express your annoyance, you might have some mixed feelings when the preschooler expresses the same feelings, which might make you less likely to solve the problem.  Or you might subconsciously hope that the kid's whining will make the mom feel bad and motivate her to fix the problem, and then when it doesn't work that way feel even more justified about your own annoyance.

That doesn't mean that if you have a contract that says that you're supposed to be able to walk out the door at 5:30 you can make it clear that it isn't working for you. But don't put your charge in the middle of that.  Shift the time you feed them to 5:15 so the child comes to expect that mom will arrive after dinner starts not during, or if mom is eating with the child then wait to put the dinner on the table until mom walks in the door.

On the other hand, if you have a contract that says your hours end at 6:00, and you're annoyed by a 5:40 arrival, then you need to recognize that that isn't fair.  There are very few professional jobs that pay enough for a nanny, where people are going to arrive home at exactly the same time every day.  If your boss has one of those few jobs, and a commute that's totally predictable, then that's great but as long as your boss has done the responsible thing and written the contract so that it accounts for that lack of predictability, then this isn't a reasonable thing to be annoyed about. [/quote]

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