Partnership with parents is part of good practice for all early years practitioners. But nannies will experience partnership in a different way from the key person role in a nursery. You are employed directly by the family and you work in their home. Live-in nannies additionally share that home as their own living space. So nannies have a more personal working relationship than in even the most family-oriented early years centre.
As a nanny you aim to develop a friendly working relationship with the parents of the children. But your position means that some situations will need to be handled with professionalism to the fore, rather than the choices you might make based on friendship. Families vary: some nannies will be employed by lone-parent households, some will relate more to one parent than another within a two-parent household, and some work for families where grandparents or other relatives are prominent in daily life.
FEELINGS MATTER
Over your career as a nanny you may have some posts where problems arise for you because a working parent seems envious of the time you spend with their children. You may then have another post where, on the contrary, you find problems arise because a mother is only too ready to delegate all the affection and parenting to you. You need to deal with these situations as one adult to another, so that children's wellbeing is not compromised and they are not caught in the middle.
For example, Tessa supposedly has sole charge of six-month-old Prue.
However, Prue's mother drafts long daily schedules for Tessa and telephones at least twice a day from her office for an update. Yet, at the end of the day, it is Prue's father who takes the child on to his lap, and her mother is elsewhere making 'just one more call' on her mobile. Tessa comes to realise that Prue's mother is uneasy about handing over control and happier when Tessa regularly consults her over decisions. Prue's father is more interested in the detail of his baby daughter's actual day and her developmental progress. Tessa does not find this situation ideal, but it seems to work for the family.
In a different example, Janet is responsible for two-year-old Carly and four-year-old Jack. The children's mother, Stephanie, runs a very demanding business from home but misses her children. Janet has had to deal with emotionally charged situations because Carly and Jack are sometimes welcomed into the office and then told to get out, with minimal warning.
The children are fond of Janet, and Carly has called her 'Mummy' twice lately. Stephanie hears the second time and speaks very sharply to her daughter and then to Janet to remind her that she is 'only the nanny here!'
Janet asks to speak with Stephanie and raises the problems, as she sees them, with courteous yet assertive language. Janet explains how she had previously dealt with Carly calling her 'Mummy' and says, 'I appreciate that you were unhappy about what Carly said. But it's not OK to speak to me like that in front of the children.'
Transition times are hard in some families because young children may see-saw between delight that their parent is home and distress that they have been away all day. Four-year-old Harry may want to tell his Daddy about the scary dog in the park, and he starts to cry at the memory.
Harry's nanny needs to respect the fact that Harry wants to re-tell the event and have his father's comfort. She needs to indicate briefly to the father that she did handle the situation, but will have an adult conversation later. Another time, the father may be keen to talk with his son, but Harry is busy or feeling sad about his nanny leaving to go to her home. A responsible nanny eases Harry across, while still showing that she cares about him - 'Your Daddy is waiting to tell you about his day' or 'I think your Daddy will be able to mend the truck that we couldn't fix.'
CONSISTENCY MATTERS
It will take more than one conversation within the early weeks of a new job in order to understand what a family prefers and how parents wish you to handle the normal choices within daily life with their children. Young children need their important adults to be consistent about the key decisions, such as the house rules, bedtime, how much television and similar choices. They can manage the fact that adults are individuals and will have slightly different approaches. However, children will spot significant inconsistencies between how you and their parents react.
A reasonable level of consistency is important when young children attend nursery or school, since they can get confused between home and nursery rules. If adults hold to their own boundaries, three- and four-year-olds work out that different places have different ground rules. However, differences are much harder to handle when they happen in the same setting - the child's own home - and you, as the nanny, are possibly caught in the middle.
Children, too, react in different ways to inconsistency. For example, Lisa is nanny to three-year-old Wendy and five-year-old Leonie. When she started the job, Lisa had a long discussion with Anthea, the children's mother, and was given clear house rules about sweets, television and bedtime routines on those days when Anthea works into the evening. After a month with the family, Lisa realises that the rest of the family is not consistent on these 'firm' rules. Wendy seems to feel uneasy about the variations and concerned not to be in the wrong with somebody. On the other hand, Leonie happily goes for the gap and challenges Lisa on several occasions, saying, 'My Mummy lets me have sweets - you're horrid!' and 'My Daddy's nice. He says "let her stay up, bed's boring".'
Since her main relationship is with the children's mother, Lisa finds a quiet moment to speak with Anthea. 'I need to talk again about what you called the family rules,' she begins. 'For instance, Leonie tells me she is allowed to have chocolate during the week. But I understood that you wanted sweets limited to weekends.' From this chat, Lisa realises that the children's parents relax the rules when they are tired, but are able to see how their behaviour puts her in an awkward position. Lisa also realises that Leonie may bend the truth, so rather than just restating the rules she says, 'I can ask your Daddy, you know', and 'l'll need to have a chat with your Mummy about that tonight.'
RESPECTING PARENTS
Currently we have quite enough 'entertainment' programmes on television where the aim is to show parents as incompetent people who have to be saved by an outside expert, be it a 'supernanny' or child psychologist. Some of these are honest about how hard it can be to see the wood for the trees when you are emotionally involved with children. It is important that a nanny, however experienced, shows respect for family ways and parents'
knowledge of their own children. You too spend a lot of time with the children and you too may need to untangle the emotions (how you feel) from the logical thinking (what makes most sense).
You have your own expertise, and it is professional to share it with the family. But you can avoid playing the expert by offering an opinion in a friendly, sharing way, such as, 'I think it could help if we showed Leonie that we talk together. Then she will realise she can't play us off each other.'
You may also need to find regular occasions to affirm the children's love for their parents. Harry's nanny can later tell the father, 'I could see the look on Harry's face. He felt so much better after he had told you about the dog in the park.' Janet can tell Stephanie that her children are excited about 'playing Mummy' in their pretend office and that Jack often says, 'My Mummy told me...' or 'Mummy will know all about that.'
