Finding A Nanny | Hiring A Nanny

Chapter 9

Prepare Your Child for the Nanny’s First Day

There are different ways to introduce your nanny’s employment to your child, and no one way is right or wrong – but there are different methods that will work better for your child than other ones.

For parents who practice attachment parenting

Some parents who practice “attachment parenting” will want to very gradually wean their child off of them and onto the nanny so that the child suffers the least possible separation anxiety. This may take weeks or even months depending on the parent’s commitment to the child’s lack of anxiety.

Attachment parenting is not a new concept, but it is newly popular with certain mothers, and nannies may not be aware of this philosophy of not letting the child suffer anxiety.

If you sense that your nanny is uncertain about what you are doing, take a few minutes to sit down with her and explain your theory of parenting. You may even want to give her a book on it, but don’t inundate her with literature.

For parents who prefer a cold turkey approach

Other parents practice a “cold turkey” philosophy of just leaving with a cheery goodbye and a swift exit – whether the child is crying or calm. If this is your philosophy, do call your nanny on the phone an hour or two later to see how things are going. If the child cries for more than an hour or two, you may want to check in with your pediatrician and ask his or her advice.

For parents who use Ferber methods for behavior modification

“Ferber” sleep methods can be applied to the nanny transition. For anyone not familiar with Ferber, this is a method of teaching babies to sleep that was invented by a man named Ferber. There are books and magazines and internet articles about this method. In a nutshell, this method calls for a gradual weaning process, and relies on the principal that it is the child’s responsibility to learn to sleep – not the parent’s responsibility to get the child to sleep. This is the opposite of “attachment parenting,” where the child is “attached” to the parent in an effort to prevent a child’s separation anxiety. The Ferber method of “sleep behavior modification” can be adopted by you and your nanny to promote behavior modification in a child who cries when his mother leaves him with a nanny (or at pre-school).