The Nanny/Parent Relationship

Everyone benefits when the nanny and the parents develop an effective working relationship.  Children thrive where there is continuity of care from the adults who are important in their lives.  Parents' trust in the nanny grows when the parent/nanny team is working well.  For the nanny, a harmonious relationship is essential for promoting children's well-being to the fullest extent possible and for job satisfaction.  The following guidelines suggest ways in which the nanny can foster positive relationships with parents.

Understand Your Role in the Household:  Begin by being clear in your own mind about why you have chosen to care for someone else's children in someone else's home.  The role of the nanny and the parent must not be confused.  The nanny is there to complement the parent, not to replace.  Mothers in particular often feel ambivalent or guilty about going out to work and leaving their children in someone else's care.  They worry that their children will become closer to the caregiver than to them.  Suspicions that this is happening, unfounded or not, will undermine the relationship between the nanny and the mother.  Nannies must never compete, or seem to be competing with parents for children's affections.  The parent/child relationship must be supported.  Nannies must also be able to make a clear distinction between the relationship they form in their employer's family and their relationships within their own families.  Nannies must be able to share in the many aspects of family life likely to be encountered in a private home without compromising their professionalism.  Though nannies may feel for the joys and sorrows of the families who employ them, they must maintain some detachment to be effective.  Personal friendships with either parent, other family members, or friends of the family complicate the nanny/parent relationship, confuse children, and are inappropriate.

Respect parents. Raising children requires many years of commitment, sacrifice, and responsibility.  Parents deserve respect for the job of parenting.  Theirs is the primary role in promoting their children's healthy development.  They are their children's primary caregivers and teachers.  It is sometimes tempting for those who take care of other people's children to criticize parents for the way they parent.  Whether the criticism is voiced or not, a judgmental attitude toward parents will inhibit the nanny/parent relationship.  Nannies must avoid seeing themselves as superior substitutes for parents or the rescuers of children whose parents are too busy to take care of them.  Instead, nannies need to see themselves as parent supports in the task of promoting children's well-being.  The values, needs, and ideas of parents must be acknowledged when there is disagreement about childrearing issues.  Professional expertise must not be used to impose the nanny's ideas on parents, but to work together with parents toward a reasonable solution.

Develop a partnership with parents:  A partnership between the nanny and parents provides the child with needed consistency and strengthens the nanny/parent relationship.  Conflicts over discipline and decisions concerning the child are avoided when the nanny and parent develop a system of mutual support.  Children are confused when they receive contradictory messages from the nanny and a parent.  The parents and the nanny need to discuss and agree upon how they will respond in certain situations before the situations arise.  While the nanny may be in charge of daily routines and activities, the parent will probably be the one who decides if a child can invite a friend for dinner or spend some of his piggy-bank money.  When the nanny and the parent are involved with the children at the same time, it is particularly important that they support one another.