Ok, here’s the thing:  I have to fire my nanny this week.  This is why I’ve been rather stressed lately.

1. I don’t feel that my daughter is safe and/or getting the care she needs with the nanny.  Every day I go to work wondering if my child is going to have some completely preventable accident that she won’t be able to recover from.
2. I have never had to fire anyone before.  This is going to suck.
3. The nanny is our friend and we will be seeing her and her husband regularly at church.  In addition to the stress of trying to maintain a friendship after telling someone “we don’t trust you with our child,” we feel obligated to keep it under wraps in the circle of friends we share …which is usually our first stop in the search to find a nanny.
4. We have to find a new nanny.
5. This would be our fourth nanny since February.  Our options get slimmer each time.
6. If we can’t find someone, it means I will have to quit my job.
7. I love my job and hate the thought of giving up my future opportunity here.
8. My job brings in over half our income.  Making due without it will be more than difficult.

There are several circumstances surrounding the need to discontinue the nannying relationship.  Several of these - were they isolated incidents - would be easy to ignore, but together they present a situation that I have to act on.  Not doing so would be a severe act of negligence and bad parenting on my part.

1. The fall last Monday.  At first I had made the optimistic conclusion that this could have happened to any of us because we all put the bouncer on the counter.  But when Jens and I tried to reproduce the incident (no, not with Button in the bouncer) in order to make the bouncer capable of falling off the counter, it had to be grossly overhanging from the counter.  This brought us to the conclusion that our nanny must have a) Not checked to be sure that all four corners of the base were on the counter, and b) Either not noticed the overhang, or noticed it and did nothing to correct it.  Either way, that kind of negligence is dangerous.
2. Wednesday, we received a call from our housekeeper, concerned about the nanny’s ability to care properly for our child.  She had expressed her concerns prior to the fall to my brother and SIL, but sworn them to secrecy about it because she didn’t want to interfere.  For some reason, they thought keeping a secret was more important than my child’s well-being and DIDN’T TELL US.  Thanks, guys.
3. The nanny seems incapable of keeping track of her own son and my daughter at the same time.  It may be partially due to his age, but the fact remains that her son is destructive.  I never know what’s going to be broken when I come home.  DVD cases inserted into the VCR, broken candles, broken trash can, cat food thrown all over the floor, etc.
4. Along those lines, our trash can was broken the other day because her son threw it down the stairs while she was changing Button’s diaper and couldn’t get to him.  What if that had been her son falling down the stairs?  Button will be crawling and moving about soon.  If she can’t keep up with ONE mobile child, how could she ever keep up with TWO?
5. There is a degree of preventative common sense that seems to be lacking.  Mostly, it affects her own son, but - like the fall off the counter - if she’s caring for another child, it will inevitably come into play.  For instance,
   • Her son was helping unload the dishwasher because he likes to do the silverware (he’s 18 months old).  Suddenly she realizes he’s not there and goes around the corner to find him sticking a fork in a light socket.  So the new rule is if they’re unloading the dishwasher, he either has to be in the kitchen with her, or out of the kitchen completely.  Why is that a NEW rule?
   • They had to go to the hospital the other day because she allowed her son to eat Wheat Thins while jumping up and down in the Jumperoo and he inhaled part of the chip, which lodged itself into the lung.  So the new rule is no chips while jumping up and down.
   • Yesterday, her son showed up with a gash in his forehead from falling head-first into a table at their house.  This is just my own conjecture, but I cannot imagine how that size of a wound would be possible unless he was running full force in the house.

Look, I know accidents happen.  But there are a lot of them that can be prevented with somewhat reasonable measures.  Button could have been seriously injured by falling on her head from that height.  You can’t just wait until something happens before you take precautions and “make new rules.”

And so, here I stand.  At the end of the day, I’m responsible for her health and well-being and if having a job is jeopardizing that, then I can’t take the risk.  But at the same time, the thought of giving up my job is heartbreaking.  I’m trying to suggest a work-from-home solution to my bosses, because virtually everything I do can be done off-site.  But they’re not too thrilled about the idea.

So it may come down to my child or my job.  If that’s the case, then the decision is already made, but it will be a very painful one.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Childcare, Feeling, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.