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[quote=Anonymous]Nanny arriving and immediately making and eating breakfast while on the clock is very unprofessional. For one thing, it feels like she's taking advantage of the free food you provide. For another, you say the toddler follows you upstairs while you get ready for work; presumably if nanny was focused on the kids instead of her own breakfast, she could engage the child and prevent that from happening. I would definitely speak with nanny and tell her that you expect her to eat breakfast before she arrives because you need her to engage with the children upon her arrival.

I'm a nanny with an early arrival time and I eat something small as I'm heading out the door and driving to work (a banana, almonds, granola bar, etc), and then don't eat again until morning snack time with the children (9:45am). Usually when I arrive the kids are just sitting down to breakfast, but sometimes I need to help prepare breakfast. Even then there's so much going on between taking care of the baby and preschooler and a brief morning chat with MB and DB while they head out the door, I wouldn't be able to do my job and eat at that time anyway.

Now, you say this is one of many issues. But, the only other issue you've mentioned is that your toddler cries when she arrives, and follows you upstairs while you get ready for work, and you "don't think toddler likes the nanny." It is difficult to find fault with the nanny for this. For one thing, a toddler crying when nanny arrives and MB starts to get ready to go is VERY normal, it's separation anxiety, and probably almost every nanny has experienced this as well as many MBs. Separation anxiety isn't indicative of any other issues between your toddler and your nanny.

With a recent nanny family their toddler would cry every morning when mommy left. But guess what -- he also cried every afternoon when I left.  I've had many toddlers cry in the ten mins leading up to mommy walking out the door, but the very second she's out of sight, the toddler is happy and playing with me.

Other than the separation anxiety, which is developmentally normal and not nanny's fault, do you have any other evidence that your toddler isn't bonding well with your nanny? As I said, if nanny wasn't making and eating her breakfast she could at least try to engage your child so they don't follow you upstairs in the morning, but if you address the breakfast issue then that should resolve the toddler going upstairs issue.

You say the breakfast issue is one of many issues you have with nanny. Based on what you've said so far I think the best advice is to address the breakfast issue and ignore the separation anxiety issue for now (as one pp suggested, trying to leave asap after nanny's arrival will reduce the amount of crying and frustration, otherwise there's not much you can do about separation anxiety). If there are other big issues going on, perhaps this nanny isn't a good fit, but without more to go on I wouldn't advise letting her go for just what has been described here.

And with regard to the timeline... you say you have a baby, so presumably under 12 months old, and a toddler, and nanny has been with you almost a year. Introducing a new nanny and a new baby right around the same time may have hindered the bonding process between toddler and nanny. Likewise, having a baby in the picture could also trigger more separation anxiety in the toddler. Just something to consider. [/quote]

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