How To Handle Problems With Your Nanny – Working With A Nanny From A-Z Series – Ep.13

Hi friends! It’s Laura back with Episode #13 in our series, “Working With A Nanny From A-Z”. In today’s episode, I discuss how to handle problems with your nanny.

A common message I receive from parents:

“Hey Laura, I need some advice as I am not sure how to handle this issue. I’m noticing that….”

Sitting down with your nanny to address a problem can feel awkward and uncomfortable for many parents. If you aren’t sure how to sit down and discuss an issue with your nanny, don’t stress….you’re not alone!

Click here to watch Episode #13 and check out my tips!

New to our “Working With A Nanny From A-Z” videos? In this series, I am going to walk you through the entire process of working with a nanny. From deciding if nanny care is right for your family all the way through how to find, interview, hire and work with a nanny. Basically, everything you need to know from A-Z about the nanny world!

If you missed any of the first twelve episodes, click the images below to check those out:

In today’s video, I discuss the common problems that I hear from parents and go over my five top tips for handling an issue with your nanny so that both the parent and nanny feel heard and there are no hurt feelings.

Nannies – what tips do you have for other nannies that might be experiencing a problem with their nanny family? I’d love to hear from you. Simply comment below!

A transcript of the video can be found below:

Hi everyone, Laura from Nanny Parent Connection here. Welcome back to my “Working With A Nanny From A to Z” video series.

So far in this video series, I’ve covered everything from “Is a nanny right for your family” to “Important conversations to have the first week with your nanny”.

In today’s episode, I’m going to discuss how to handle problems with your nanny.

Hopefully before any problem arises, you’ve discussed the 10 important conversations to have with your new nanny. If not, check out that video by clicking here.

In addition to having these 10 important conversations with your nanny, hopefully, you’ve also laid some groundwork for letting your nanny know how important it is to have a collaborative relationship with good communication between all parties, and you’ve also taken steps to foster a very healthy, very positive work culture where your nanny feels safe and comfortable bringing forth questions concerns, etc.

It’s important to note that a comprehensive nanny contract will help to preempt many of these situations from getting to the awkward phase. I’ll give you some examples of the types of things that can come up between nannies and families, and these are six real-world examples that people have reached out to me to discuss:

#1: Not getting tasks done around the house or leaving early before the shift is done and the “to-do” list is finished for the day

#2: Daily tidying of spaces used throughout the day is not happening, and the parents are coming home to a house that’s a mess

#3: Too much cell phone use during the day

#4: Problems with punctuality

#5: Not getting the kids outside daily, or enough outdoor time

#6: The nanny is not being proactive with planning, or bringing forth ideas for activities and outings

Now, it’s fair also to point out that it’s not always the family who has a problem with the nanny, sometimes there’s something that’s happening within the family that is difficult or problematic for the nanny as well.

These tips can be used for either party in order to bring forth and hopefully resolve a difficult situation.

So, here are my five tips for how to handle a problem when it arises with your nanny:

#1: Honesty is always the best policy

Difficult conversations are not going to be made any easier if you’re not being honest.

#2: Delivery counts

Try to be as tactful as possible. Give your nanny the benefit of the doubt, ask questions and listen, let the nanny explain their side of the situation.

#3: Address a problem sooner rather than later

You don’t want to sit around and stew on something because a minor irritation might eventually turn into a really big deal for you. So, nip any frustrations in the bud by just getting everything out in the open right away. Don’t let the issue snowball, address any issues right away.

#4: Refer back to your contract

Now your contract might have a clause or section that refers to conflict management or how to handle issues when they arise. This could look something like this, first, you give a verbal warning, if the problem doesn’t get better or the same thing keeps happening, give a written warning the next time. And, on the third offense, of course, you might consider termination depending on what the problem is exactly.

Now there are some things that are issues that come up that are actually safety issues and they might be grounds for immediate termination, and things like that would include leaving children unattended in a bathtub, or perhaps forgetting to drain the bathtub water after bath time and just having an unsafe situation where you have a tub full of water and curious children and that’s not a good situation at all as we all know it’s very dangerous. Another example might be inviting guests over to your home without permission – that could put your children’s safety at risk.

Those are also real-world examples, things I’ve heard people talk about that are problems with their nannies, reasons they’ve terminated nannies.

My advice? If it’s a safety issue where your children or family are at risk, that’s grounds for immediate termination.

# 5: Create an action plan

Discuss a plan to correct the behavior with your nanny, offer your help if needed.

I would also recommend summarizing any of these verbal conversations that you have with your nanny that may have specific action items, or specific due dates, any of those things. Summarize that in an email between all parties. This will create a good paper trail, something you can refer back to, it’s just a good thing to make everybody aware that “hey, this conversation happened, here’s what we decided and here’s the deadline”. That check-in date is really important because you want to circle back and talk about how are things progressing, have things gotten better, and what the next steps might be.

Alright, everyone, that’s it for Episode 13 “How To Handle Problems With Your Nanny”.

I hope the information in this video was helpful. Please click the like button, subscribe, or ring the bell so that you can be notified when more of these videos come out next time. Please join me again next week when I release Episode #14 which focuses on annual reviews.

Thanks, everyone. Enjoy the extra hour of sunshine 🙂 Bye!