Oh. My. GOD.
Jun. 30th, 2009 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaWe have to fire our nanny. We have to fire our nanny right now.
She's been great with Colin, but at the beginning of June when Alex started to come home at lunchtime to spend the afternoon with the nanny, there were immediate problems. Alex didn't like her. She cried when Michael dropped her off. She complained to me that Polly told lies. When I asked her for examples, she told me about something that was transparently a case of joking around. So I talked to Polly, in Alex's presence, about cutting out the joking until Alex knew her well enough to tell that she was kidding. But Alex still said she didn't like her.
We thought it was adjustment. We thought it was too many changes too quickly. We thought it was having to get used to Michael picking her up at school and then immediately dropping her off again instead of staying home to be with her. We weren't crazy about how Polly interacted with Alex in our presence, but it didn't seem actively objectionable.
We were wrong.
Yesterday afternoon Polly called me at work. She told me a rambling story about Alex's behavior: she had suggested they go to the park, Alex didn't want to, she persisted, Alex said she was being mean. I was nonplussed that an experienced nanny would call the mother about something like this, but I listened, and it was a good thing I did. Because in the course of her explanation of what she said to Alex and what Alex said to her, she came to this:
Polly: You made me feel sad when you said those things to me.
Alex: Well, you should treat others the way you want to be treated.
Polly: Where did you hear that?
Alex: In a book.
Polly: Well, you know, God doesn't like it when you say mean things to someone.
...
I listened to the rest of her story and then brought the topic back to God. I told her that she. Could. NEVER. Tell our child what God wouldn't like or what God would do. And she said, essentially, "okay, fine, now I know that's how you feel."
I came home and told Michael that we needed a new nanny. I simply didn't trust the judgment of someone who would think that was a good thing to say to a child. We decided that the best thing to do would be to line someone else up as quickly as possible and then give Polly abrupt notice and two weeks' severance pay. He called and left a message for the person who had been the runner-up for the job, in case she hadn't found anything better by now. And this morning I explained again, firmly, to Polly that she may never mention God in any kind of monitoring or punitive context. I walked her through the methods we use when Alex is difficult or oppositional. And they seemed to have gotten through the afternoon okay.
But tonight, Alex and I were pretending while I made dinner. I was the White Witch, evil Queen of Narnia, and Alex was my daughter and evil helper. I told her to go make a trap we could use to catch human children. And she told me,
"We can make it so the trap takes them to the devil!"
I froze. "Who's the devil?" I asked.
"He grabs bad boys and girls and sticks them in the fire," she told me.
"Where did you hear about the devil?" I asked as casually as possible.
"Polly told me."
"Did she tell you about him today or another day?"
"It was some other day."
After dinner we talked a little bit more about the devil. She asked me, "Have you ever been under the earth? Where he lives?"
"I've been under the earth," I told her. "I was in a cave. There was no devil there. The devil isn't real."
"Miss Polly got a phone call from him one time," she told me. "He asked her if she knew about any bad boys or girls."
"Were you there when she got the phone call?"
Alex nodded cheerfully.
I got out her copy of Magic School Bus Inside the Earth and showed her the picture we've often looked at together, a cross-section drawing of the earth. I showed her that from the outside in there is dirt and rocks, melted rock, solid rock, melted metal, solid metal. "Is there a devil anywhere that you can see?"
"No."
"The devil isn't real," I said. "He's something people made up to scare kids with."
"Why would people do that?"
"When Miss Polly told you that the devil put bad kids in the fire, were you being naughty?"
She considered. "I don't think so."
"Well, I think she told you about the devil because she wanted to scare you so you would do what she said. But she's wrong. There is no devil."
The only thing that keeps me from going completely crazy and causing physical harm to this woman is that Alex seems to have let her twisted theology roll right off her back. According to Polly, here's how the conversation about God continued:
Polly: Well, you know, God doesn't like it when you say mean things to someone.
Alex: Well, in ancient China the emperor was a Godlike person and he didn't talk to ordinary people.
Polly: That may be true in China, but here God talks to everybody.
And Alex reported to me about it later:
Me: Did you and Polly have a conversation about God today?
Alex: Yeah. There's a God up in heaven, and he talks to everybody.
Me: Oh, that's what Polly said, huh? What do you think?
Alex: I don't think there's a God like that.
Me: Yeah, me neither.
She seems to be putting Polly's God and devil on about the same level as trolls and ghosts. There doesn't seem to be any real resonance. But jesus, now I understand why she's been complaining so much about being left with Polly. I feel horrible for putting it down to "adjustment issues."
Tomorrow I'll call a professional nanny placement agency. And I'll see if Alex can go back to spending her afternoons at school. We may need to have Polly spend another day or two with Colin - or maybe I'll take him to work - but no freaking WAY will she ever spend one more minute with Alex. EVER.
Oh my God. I purely CANNOT BELIEVE this is happening. My poor kid.
She's been great with Colin, but at the beginning of June when Alex started to come home at lunchtime to spend the afternoon with the nanny, there were immediate problems. Alex didn't like her. She cried when Michael dropped her off. She complained to me that Polly told lies. When I asked her for examples, she told me about something that was transparently a case of joking around. So I talked to Polly, in Alex's presence, about cutting out the joking until Alex knew her well enough to tell that she was kidding. But Alex still said she didn't like her.
We thought it was adjustment. We thought it was too many changes too quickly. We thought it was having to get used to Michael picking her up at school and then immediately dropping her off again instead of staying home to be with her. We weren't crazy about how Polly interacted with Alex in our presence, but it didn't seem actively objectionable.
We were wrong.
Yesterday afternoon Polly called me at work. She told me a rambling story about Alex's behavior: she had suggested they go to the park, Alex didn't want to, she persisted, Alex said she was being mean. I was nonplussed that an experienced nanny would call the mother about something like this, but I listened, and it was a good thing I did. Because in the course of her explanation of what she said to Alex and what Alex said to her, she came to this:
Polly: You made me feel sad when you said those things to me.
Alex: Well, you should treat others the way you want to be treated.
Polly: Where did you hear that?
Alex: In a book.
Polly: Well, you know, God doesn't like it when you say mean things to someone.
...
I listened to the rest of her story and then brought the topic back to God. I told her that she. Could. NEVER. Tell our child what God wouldn't like or what God would do. And she said, essentially, "okay, fine, now I know that's how you feel."
I came home and told Michael that we needed a new nanny. I simply didn't trust the judgment of someone who would think that was a good thing to say to a child. We decided that the best thing to do would be to line someone else up as quickly as possible and then give Polly abrupt notice and two weeks' severance pay. He called and left a message for the person who had been the runner-up for the job, in case she hadn't found anything better by now. And this morning I explained again, firmly, to Polly that she may never mention God in any kind of monitoring or punitive context. I walked her through the methods we use when Alex is difficult or oppositional. And they seemed to have gotten through the afternoon okay.
But tonight, Alex and I were pretending while I made dinner. I was the White Witch, evil Queen of Narnia, and Alex was my daughter and evil helper. I told her to go make a trap we could use to catch human children. And she told me,
"We can make it so the trap takes them to the devil!"
I froze. "Who's the devil?" I asked.
"He grabs bad boys and girls and sticks them in the fire," she told me.
"Where did you hear about the devil?" I asked as casually as possible.
"Polly told me."
"Did she tell you about him today or another day?"
"It was some other day."
After dinner we talked a little bit more about the devil. She asked me, "Have you ever been under the earth? Where he lives?"
"I've been under the earth," I told her. "I was in a cave. There was no devil there. The devil isn't real."
"Miss Polly got a phone call from him one time," she told me. "He asked her if she knew about any bad boys or girls."
"Were you there when she got the phone call?"
Alex nodded cheerfully.
I got out her copy of Magic School Bus Inside the Earth and showed her the picture we've often looked at together, a cross-section drawing of the earth. I showed her that from the outside in there is dirt and rocks, melted rock, solid rock, melted metal, solid metal. "Is there a devil anywhere that you can see?"
"No."
"The devil isn't real," I said. "He's something people made up to scare kids with."
"Why would people do that?"
"When Miss Polly told you that the devil put bad kids in the fire, were you being naughty?"
She considered. "I don't think so."
"Well, I think she told you about the devil because she wanted to scare you so you would do what she said. But she's wrong. There is no devil."
The only thing that keeps me from going completely crazy and causing physical harm to this woman is that Alex seems to have let her twisted theology roll right off her back. According to Polly, here's how the conversation about God continued:
Polly: Well, you know, God doesn't like it when you say mean things to someone.
Alex: Well, in ancient China the emperor was a Godlike person and he didn't talk to ordinary people.
Polly: That may be true in China, but here God talks to everybody.
And Alex reported to me about it later:
Me: Did you and Polly have a conversation about God today?
Alex: Yeah. There's a God up in heaven, and he talks to everybody.
Me: Oh, that's what Polly said, huh? What do you think?
Alex: I don't think there's a God like that.
Me: Yeah, me neither.
She seems to be putting Polly's God and devil on about the same level as trolls and ghosts. There doesn't seem to be any real resonance. But jesus, now I understand why she's been complaining so much about being left with Polly. I feel horrible for putting it down to "adjustment issues."
Tomorrow I'll call a professional nanny placement agency. And I'll see if Alex can go back to spending her afternoons at school. We may need to have Polly spend another day or two with Colin - or maybe I'll take him to work - but no freaking WAY will she ever spend one more minute with Alex. EVER.
Oh my God. I purely CANNOT BELIEVE this is happening. My poor kid.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 01:30 am (UTC)Yeah. Already when she called me yesterday I was thinking, "What kind of nanny doesn't know how to handle a four-year-old who says 'you're being meeeaaan to me!'?"
Can you believe, she came with glowing, glowing long-term references. Unbelievable.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 04:11 am (UTC)Too bad there's not a way to screen the people giving the references, if you see what I mean.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 03:30 pm (UTC)A better question to screen for this specific problem might be, "How do your religious views influence the way you care for children?" Someone who feels called to teach them godly behavior is likely to be a problem. Someone who wants to show them the beauty of the divinely-created world may be somebody you can work with, for this year. (Though I agree that the general problem is that a nanny really ought to have a whole stack of good ways to handle a 4 y.o. saying "you're being meeeaaan to me!" It's not like anyone could expect the situation to never come up.)
I don't think Rivka did anything wrong in choosing this nanny. The glowing references seem to have been *wildly* misleading. That could have fooled anybody.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-02 08:23 am (UTC)Not at all. I'm not familiar with nannies, but I'm used to looking for riding instructors/trainers. People entrust their kids' and animals' lives to these people, so it's not that different.
What people are looking for, and what they're willing to accept differs greatly. I've seen people do good jobs (and clients happy) with easy situations; and the same people failed badly (or resorted to dangerous and/or abusive practices) when the going got even moderately tough. I've seen people do just fine with a limited set of challenges - maybe this nanny is great with babies or great with eight-year-olds who have been brought up in reference framework she's familiar with - and be disastrously unsuited to another set of challenges (Alex).
In short, people have come with great references that I would not trust at all, and in many cases it is possible to reconstruct how that reference came to be. This does not mean that someone meets *your* standards. And everyone who has had to make decisions - hire someone in whatever position - will make decisions that, with hindsight, prove to have benefited from further deliberation.