I am a real nanny.
I have had the joy and privilege of being a real nanny for over twenty years. For most of that time, there seemed to be a general understanding and agreement about what a real nanny is and what a real nanny does for the family. In recent years, I have noticed a developing confusion and blurring of the lines of nanny, babysitter, housekeeper and personal assistant. Since my joy, my passion and my expertise lies in being a real nanny, I thought it might be useful to clarify what a real nanny is. In describing what a real nanny is, we could begin by saying what a real nanny is not. A real nanny is not a babysitter. A real nanny is not a housekeeper or personal assistant.
A babysitter is someone who comes over to your house, usually in the evening or on weekends and plays with your children for a few hours, maybe gives them a simple meal, often one that has been prepared or set up by the parent. Their job is to keep your children safe and entertained for a few hours.
A housekeeper will vacuum and clean the rooms in your house and may do laundry. It is customary for housekeepers to be expected to change the sheets in the bedrooms but other laundry is optional.
A personal assistant will shop for you, make travel arrangements, keep your or your family’s schedule, water your plants and check your mail when you travel, take your car in for service and many other activities that involve the smooth flow of the necessary details of your daily life.
A nanny’s primary responsibility is for the safety and well being of your child. This requires many skill sets and requires a personality with enough maturity to use good judgment in a wide variety of situations every day. A really good nanny will be intuitive and know how to steer your children towards healthy relationships and situations and away from associations that might not be in their best interests. Sometimes this as simple as making firm rules about how much time can be spent on video games and as complex as encouraging friendships by making sure play dates are scheduled and forming friendly comfortable bonds with families she feels are a positive match for your child.
A real nanny will supervise the activities of your children, including homework or other school projects, playdates, sports or other extracurricular activities. In addition to safely transporting your children, she will be aware of the childrens’ schedule and be able to plan the day according to what needs to happen and when. A good nanny will bond with your children by participating in their favorite activities with them. She will be physically fit enough to participate in regular outdoor fun activities.
When I go to the pool or park with children in my care, my main focus stays on the children. Depending on their ages, I either actively engage in play with them or watch their play with other kids. It’s usually a combination. This is a great way to observe aspects of their personality and ways that they perceive and relate to the world that may not get expressed at home. What I am not doing is texting or calling all my friends to chat, or watching a movie on my ipod. I rarely even take a book along to these outings because I don’t want to get lost in a book. A magazine is ok, because I can look through it and still keep my attention on the children. Which is not that hard because every few seconds, someone yells, “Look at me!” Wherever we go, no matter how much fun it is, I am at work, always conscious that the childrens’ safety and well being depends on me. A real nanny knows that when she’s at work, she’s always on the job.
She will know your children’s friends and most of the parents of those children who are close to your child. She will be skilled enough in communication and organization to keep you informed of any important dates that are coming up in your child’s life as well as any significant developments with your child or your child’s relationships with others. In many of my jobs, both parents work full time, often 10-12 hour days and they don’t always have a lot of time to bond with the parents of their childrens’ friends. Your nanny can be a great liason and source of information for you about the families where your child spends time on playdates.
As a full charge nanny, I am often the first person who either witnesses or hears about a conflict that happened at school or with a friend and am therefore the first responder in terms of teaching children how to handle difficulties in their relationships with others. In an ideal nanny/parent partnership, we have discussed these types of situations in advance, talked about our personal points of view and come to a mutual agreement about how to approach conflicts and challenges.This is one of the reasons I give such detailed advice in my ebook, “How to Find the Perfect Nanny”.
In my book, I help parents ask questions that will illuminate a nanny candidate’s views on these kinds of issues. As the nanny/family relationship progresses, this type of pre-sort in the interview process proves to be increasingly valuable. As you learn to identify and select someone whose views on child rearing and relationships is similar and compatible with your own, these situations can be handled with ease.A real nanny will help the child learn to organize his/her room and help keep order there. This might include making sure that toys are picked up before the housekeeper arrives. When your children are small, she may take care of their laundry and putting away their clothes. As they get older, she will teach them to take responsibility for their own clothes and belongings. That may be teaching them how to do their own laundry or making sure they put their clothes in the proper place for the housekeeper to retrieve, helping them learn how to organize storage bins and shelves and how to use all the space in their room the best way.
As most of us who have spent lots of time with children know, it’s a lot easier to just pick up after a child than to teach him or her to take charge of their own space and stuff. My philosophy is that it’s my responsibility to help the children I care for learn how to manage and organize the maintenance that supports their daily life. The difficulty of this varies greatly from one child to another. Some children enjoy helping and taking charge of their own chores and others will spend much more time and energy resisting a task than it would take to do it ten times. In twenty years on the job as a nanny, I have experienced extremes of both helpfulness and resistance but most kids are a mixture. Either way, it’s my job to help them learn to be independent and responsible.A nanny will do her best to teach your children to enjoy healthy foods, be aware of their eating habits, encourage them to try new foods in order to have a balanced diet and may prepare meals for them. In order to do this she will need to have a knowledge of nutrition in general and of child physiology as well. She will have to understand how to introduce new foods to children and use creativity in food preparation. This can be one of the trickiest aspects of being a nanny because every family has different beliefs and expectations about food.
As a nanny, I must be sensitive to and in harmony with the family’s food patterns while trying to teach healthy nutrition habits that will benefit the child for a lifetime. I’ve worked with families who ate only microbiotic food and families who had sugary cereal for breakfast and desert with every meal as well as in between meals.
A real nanny is a teacher, with an understanding of childhood development, how children learn and insight into how your particular child learns best. Depending on your childrens’ ages, a nanny may be primary in helping your children learn to walk, talk, ride a bike, swing, snap their fingers, whistle, play a musical instrument or read and write, as well as the non-tangibles like sharing, expressing appreciation and having good manners. She knows how to be fun and loving while setting clear boundaries and always reasurring the children that a grown up is in charge.
Let’s review what a real nanny is. She is a manager, a social scheduler, analyst and liason, a cook and nutritionist with a specialty in child nutrition, a teacher, an athlete and a psychologist, with a specialty in child psychology and childhood development. A real nanny is someone who has the heart and mind to consistently ensure the safety, well being and healthy development of your precious children.
© Samantha White 2012- All Rights Reserved
