My Kids Don’t Like Our Nanny | Nanny Parent Connection

Are your kids struggling to connect with your new nanny? Our little humans have some big emotions and may be dealing with separation anxiety when your new nanny starts caring for them.

What can you do to help your kids AND nanny bond?

Check out my five tips for how to go from “my kids don’t like our nanny” to “when is our nanny going to come and play with us again”!

Click the button below to watch and I hope it helps if you find yourself in this situation.

Click Here To Watch!

A transcript of the video can be found below: 

Hi everyone, Laura from Nanny Parent Connection here.

Have you ever started out with a new nanny or sitter only to have your child say “I don’t like my nanny (or sitter)”?

This can be even more awkward if your child decides to say this in front of your nanny!

We all know that our tiny humans can have some really big emotions.

What’s likely happening in this transition is that your child is experiencing separation anxiety about being away from parents all day, and spending the entire day with someone who they don’t know really well yet.

However, children often don’t have the verbiage or communication skills needed to call it what it really is, so it comes out like “I don’t like my nanny”.

One family who I recently worked have a preschooler and an infant. They reached out to me because their preschooler was really struggling with their new nanny.

In fact, the preschooler was spending most of her days during the first two weeks in her room refusing to come out.

The parents reached out to me to see if i had any advice for navigating the situation.

So, here are the five tips that I shared with them about how to turn “I don’t like my nanny” into “When is my nanny going to come back and play with me again?”.

Tip #1: Care Philosophy

Some of the groundwork for getting your child off to a really good start with your nanny is going to begin in the interview.

During the interview process, you will want to establish that you are in alignment (or close to) in care philosophies with your nanny.

You want consistent messaging to happen in the care that the nanny provides, and any philosophies that help guide that care.

When the nanny and parents are consistent in their care and messaging to the child, it will help to keep the child from getting confused, and it will show also that the nanny and the parents are on the same team.

Tip #2: Set Everyone Up For Success

Make sure you have a strong onboarding process with your nanny.

Make sure your child or children see the nanny interacting with parents and involve the children if possible in the process.

This would include the home tour and a neighborhood tour, where you show the nanny around to any nearby parks or schools perhaps.

And this would also include covering the information in the family’s nanny binder.

Now, if you’re not sure what a nanny binder is, don’t miss this video where I cover the information every family should include in their nanny binder.

Tip #3: Be Realistic With Your Expectations

Your child is probably not going to form a strong bond with your nanny on days one or two, or even weeks one or two.

There is bound to be a learning curve of sorts building a solid trusting relationship can take time. Be patient!

Tip #4: Plan Something Extra Special

You can help to facilitate the relationship between your nanny and your child by planning, or asking your nanny to plan some extra fun activities for them to do together.

You know your child best of all and these would be their absolute favorite activities or projects. Perhaps something that they’ve been wanting to do, or maybe even something completely unexpected.

This could be activities such as picking out a new color of nail polish and painting nails. Or getting a new set of paints and creating some fun art project. Maybe an ice cream bar where you pick out special flavors of ice cream and special toppings. baking and decorating cookies or having a lemonade stand just to give a few examples.

Tip #5: Have Regular Check Ins

Work together with your nanny to find out how you can best support one another during this process as the nanny gets to know the child better, and your child gets to know the nanny better.

Back to the case of the family that I mentioned earlier, they already knew they were in care alignment with their nanny.

They had a really strong on-boarding process, and they were really really proactive with checking in with their nanny, and seeing what each other needed to be supportive during the process.

But what I suggested to the family that they hadn’t already done was to allow the preschooler some one-on-one time with the nanny without the parents or the infant around.

I suggested that the mom think about some really special activities for them to do together.

Within a week of doing this the preschooler had completely turned around, and the nanny was her new best friend, and by the end of the first-month things were humming along quite nicely.

The family was especially proactive with checking in with their nanny to see what they could do to help facilitate their nanny getting off to the smoothest start possible, and to see what they could do to help facilitate that relationship between their preschooler and the nanny.

All families hope for a smooth transition when a new care provider starts, but the reality is there is bound to be a learning curve.

Don’t get discouraged if your child doesn’t like your new nanny after day one.

You now have these tips to help you navigate the process if that’s the case with your child.

And most importantly of all, remember that these relationships take some time to build.

Finally, before you start working with your new nanny, make sure you check out my videos on onboarding your new nanny and putting together your family’s nanny binder.

Alright everyone, that’s it for today.

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Thanks everyone, bye!