When I hired my first nanny she was working on a nanny-share arrangement for my daughter and my nephew at my house. It was like that for the first 3 months. I was still on maternity leave so I had enough time to get to know her and establish a relationship of trust.
When I went back to work Miss Z was one year old. I have a flexible working environment and so I work from home two days a week. This again was beneficial because I could keep an eye on the nanny for some of the time. My husband works mostly from home so that helped too.
But what do you do when neither parent works from home? A lot of Moms go back to work before their baby is one year old, and psychologically, that feels like you have to have even more trust – to leave your defenceless baby in the arms of a stranger.
Yesterday I was out at a company event and was having breakfast with some of my colleagues. The topic of trust came up. One of the ladies said she would be paranoid about having a nanny. She would have nanny-cams and she would be monitoring them incessantly.
Another colleague said they do in fact have cameras and that they couldn’t do without them. I didn’t ask how many times they actually check in on the feeds. I have the feeling that most parents have these things just as a comfort for them and as a deterrent for the nannies (if they know about them). But I could be wrong.
Once I was reading some material from Supernanny Jo Frost and she was saying that trust has to be there from the beginning. Deciding on which nanny to hire is possibly the hardest decision you make, especially when you’re a first time Mom and you have a small baby. But, she said “if you are going to come from a place of non-trust, to the point that you need nanny-cams, then that nanny is not the right nanny for you. Indeed, it may be that no nanny is”.
I have to agree with her. I think that as individuals (or couples), you need to make the decision to trust a nanny before you even hire one. And then you look for a nanny until you find the right one. As with everything, you will know when you do. I also can’t emphasise enough the value of reference checking. Even if you hired a nanny through an agency, talk directly with references. They are the actual Moms, they are the ones that can give you comfort about the nanny’s trustworthiness.
But if you are someone that is constantly going to worry, to wonder, to feel anxious about the children with the nanny, then I advise you to look elsewhere. There are alternatives to nannies of course – nurseries and child-minders being the most common. That is what my sister in law did and with great success. She and her child-minder are still great friends now, even though her kids are now full time in school.
It is a fact that you cannot control what happens between your nanny and your child(ren) all of the time. Even with cameras. They will be out and about in the park, at the shops, going to/from school, etc. Cameras won’t save your child from abuse or from kidnapping. At best, they will help you see if she changes a nappy properly, gives them meals at the right times and plays with them.
I found that asking them to keep a diary of activities helps me have a view of what they do with the children all day and it’s a non-threatening request to the nanny. They also want to feel that you trust the quality of their work.
I know trusting your children with a nanny is a hard thing to do. There were times in those first few months that I felt anxious and scared. Every time the nanny took Miss Z to the park I felt frightened. But then I reminded myself that that was an irrational fear. That I could just call her to find out where she was and that all would be ok.
Whatever you do, don’t hire a nanny that is applying for the job just because they can’t find anything else. I once hired a nanny that was a journalist by profession in her home country. She couldn’t speak English so she was after childcare jobs. She lasted 2 ½ days.
My nanny before the current one – although she had previous experience with children, that wasn’t what she studied for. I naively hired her thinking that the fact she was the eldest of 8 siblings gave her enough additional experience of childcare. As soon as she arrived in the country, she started looking for a job in her area (unbeknown to me). I, and my children, were merely a stop gap. She left after a little over 3 months.
Even if you cannot afford qualified nannies from a nanny agency, there is hope. There are plenty of people out there that have the aptitude, the experience and the love for childcare. You just need to trust your instincts and have patience. And you will find the one.