If one’s going to go through all of the trouble and neuroticism of wiring your home for a nanny-cam, why not justgo through the bother of raising the kid yourself?
mind pik up. sorry my english gets mixed up with polish and dutch when I get pissed of.
I take it you don’t have kids.
The time expenditures of these two activities are quite remarkably different. This is very obvious to the practitioner if not the theoretician.
Further, having a someone watch your kids while you engage in any number of activities (like earning a living) isn’t the same as having someone else “raise” them.
There’s not a reasonable expectation of privacy at the nanny’s place of work. (bathroom excluded of course). Why is that a problem?
and what about all those nanys that are being treeted without respect? if not obussed? it hits both ways sometimes. and I think it is mainly the matter of trust at some point of it.
it isn’t the problem but the thing to keep in mind. Like I sais- it is understandeble as long as the nanny knows about it.
and maybe also the thing that to lats of nannys that place of work is place where she livs in. it is Your house and it is normal You want to know what’s going on there and with Your kids but without having some of privacy ther- it simply can’t be accepted. There must be some limits.
hand wave These are not the nannies you’re looking for.
I don’t think My boss would agree with You. I am here 3 years and she wants me to stay another 2. That says enough. Don’t get me wrong- I know the cameras are sort of nesessery- even. I would have them too. But In respect for the nanny I would have told her about it. We all do somethings when no one’s watching. I don’t mean bad things,just some things. And even more importand- why wait for problems if You can avoid them? And save Your kids the traumas? Don’t You think that simply by knowing about the cameras the nanny would mind herself? You’d avoid any kind of misbehaviour. And wouldn’t have Your kids hurting becouse of some … See? That’s what I would do. And I would agree on having the cameras watching me- no problem, as long as I know about them. Maybe now it would hurt a bit since we’ve learned to trust and respect each other with my boss and become sort of friends. Not to mention- I really love those kids and It would hurt too if she thouth I could hurt them. That’s all.
I like nannycams, but I do agree that they should be openly talked about and agreed upon as a condition of employment.
One of the hardest things for us childcare workers is the anxious parents - not only anxious about possible abuse, but simply just not being with their kid, not knowing what’s going on all day. They see the kid in the morning when they leave, and the kid’s probably crying a little bit from the transition. Then they pick them up in the evening, and the kid’s entered into the meltdown evening phase. So, they rightly conclude that the kid is miserable all day, when in reality they stopped crying 3 seconds after the door closed and they’re a little fried at the end of the day because they’re worn out from having had fun all day!
If it were I, I’d not only install nannycams, but set them up as webcams and monitor them from work whenever I was on break, so I could see my kid happy and creative and well-cared for. This would relieve my angst, take the pressure of the caretaker (I always feel like I need to reassure parents that we really did have a good day and that Timmy’s throwing a fit is not because I beat him) as well as give you peace of mind re: abuse. And I could get back to work with a clear mind and conscience, so my employer would get better work out of me, too. Then when I see my kid, I can ask him about the painting I saw him doing before lunch, so he feels like I’ve still been a part of his day. Wins all around.
And that is al so very true!
I don’t like it.
Mostly because it plays into the whole “if my precious baby experiences one moment of non-educational, non-self-esteem building interaction, she won’t go to Harvard/save the world/marry well”. Parents spend enough time freaking out that they might do something to ruin their kids future. They don’t need to be worrying about every other person their child meets, as well. Our entire concept of parenting is dominated by fear, and we don’t need to be contributing to this culture.
Plus, it can just be so hard to interpret some situations. the article mentioned a nanny that was caught throwing a goldfish in the garbage. Well, I can think of about a dozen scenerios where I’d throw my kid’s goldfish in the garbage. And yeah, maybe those reasons wouldn’t be so easy to explain. Nannying is emotional work. It has to be- children need love. And as emotional work, it’s going to have some points where you can’t really justify your actions. And that’s not to say nanny’s ought to have free reign to do anything they feel like. But that most likely no nanny could hold up to a parent’s constant scrutiny of each and every interaction (for that matter, I bet a spouse left with the kids wouldn’t hold up to that either.)
If you are in someones home for any reason you should behave in exactly the same way while on your own as you would if the owners were present.
If your conscience is clear then you have no reason to worry about hidden cameras.
As a construction worker I was in the position of working in peoples homes in tower blocks and we always assumed that in at least some of the flats there would be hidden cameras and it didn’t bother any of us.
If your nosy,a pervert ,a thief or make a habit of pissing in the sink then I suggest that you dont get a job working in other peoples homes let alone looking after other peoples children.
Another thing that bothered me was on the website, people saying things like the nanny ignored the child’s crying…okay, if the kid is seriously in trouble, that’s bad. But sometimes kids just whine or cry because they’re tired or bored, and paying attention (as opposed to just getting them out of the situation) sometimes just isn’t going to make them stop. I seriously doubt my parents pandered to me every time some tiny little thing was wrong.
I work from home and need a babysitter to watch my children after school until my workday is over. For a while, I shared a nanny with a friend, and the nanny always preferred to have the kids at my friend’s (empty) house during the day; she never wanted to play with them at our house. That should have tipped me off! And the kids telling me that she was always on the couch reading and required them to stay in the two playrooms except for bathroom or snack breaks. But unfortunately, it didn’t and I thought they were exaggerating. And they said the youngest was always threatening to scratch them, but the nanny didn’t believe them when they told her, and she never put the youngest (or any of them) in timeouts.
Well, when the nanny was not in the room with them (as usual, apparently) and my daughter wound up with a deep gash on her forehead requiring stitches, and she and the other girl agreed that it was because the other girl STEPPED ON HER HEAD with shoes on, when walking ON my daughter who was laying down on the bed they had both been playing on (the other girl’s mom later convinced her 3-year-old and hence very convinceable daughter that my child had rolled into the corner of the windowsill), that made me realize we needed a new childcare situation. The other mother said there was blood on that corner, and I suppose I should have pointed out that when I showed up, before the nanny cleaned up the room, my daughter’s blood was ALL OVER that room.
Then, before I thought I had a chance to hire a new babysitter, that same little girl reached over in a fit of anger, in the babysitter’s minivan, and raked her nails across my child’s face (my girl was 5-point-seatbelted in and couldn’t get away), stripping the skin off one entire side of her nose.
That was it; we were out of there, too late, and I watched my child till I could find a new babysitter, and I was an IDIOT for not having used a nannycam. Boy, the nanny just SEEMED so very capable and kind and loving and mature and…
But the fact is, she couldn’t keep the children nonviolent. If one of them thinks she can get away with that kind of thing, the nanny is not doing her job well.
So the point is, if you DON’T use a nannycam, how do you know if your trust is well placed?
If you are a nice and good nanny, then a nannycam feels like a ridiculous privacy violation. But once you’ve been on my side of the fence, maybe you realize that even nice and good seeming people are not always good nannies. And unfortunately, because of the bad apples, the good ones also need to be watched. Because otherwise, you, like me, may have to see your (usually incredibly brave, cheerful and pain-resistant) child scream in horrible agony while receiving stitches without adequate anaesthesia because they don’t believe it is good for young children, at the hospital you took her to because it was nearest and blood was coursing down her face.
The problem here is that we have commodified childcare to the point where it is economical to work while someone else raises your children. Nannycams make perfect sense if you are hiring someone you don’t know to guard your most precious commodities. Why is putting a camera over diamonds ok but not one over your nanny?
As far as a blog, there should be blogs for everything. Plenty of people will read that blog and think the parent is nuts rather than the nanny.
I didn’t actually see the part about the wiping the feet. What was the context? Were the kid’s feet wet? I’d be pretty pissed if the nanny put my daughter’s feet wet into her shoes. “Gee thanks, now she’ll get a totally avoidable chill because you were too stupid and lazy to wipe off her damn feet with a towel, and we all, including you must suffer her bad mood.” If it’s just a matter of the kids running around on a carpet before putting the shoes on then they don’t need to be wiped. I’d need more context to weigh in on who was being stupid in that fight.