BackThe right nanny
When it comes to hiring a nanny, besides the threat of an out-and-out abuse of the child, the issue is of emotional and intellectual neglect as well
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We have a two-and-a half-year- old child and I am planning to go back to work. But we keep hearing of nannies who handle children roughly, beat them or neglect them when they cry. One option is to install a CCTV camera and let them know they are under watch. Should we do this or would it be better if grandparents or neighbours made surprise visits? What about verification, giving their photographs to the local police, fingerprinting them and keeping proof of their permanent addresses? What do you suggest?
Putting in place various kinds of deterrents so that a nanny does not misbehave with your child, and having the wherewithal to track her down and bring her to book if she does, is a current reality.
No doubt it makes parents feel much safer about leaving their child with an unknown adult. However, one wonders what such an atmosphere of mistrust would do for her relationship with your child. Can a covertly hostile, sullen and resentful person be good to have around a child for long hours?
Besides out-and-out abuse, the issue is emotional and intellectual neglect. Your nanny may not actually harm your child physically, may feed him or her on time, see that the child is not alone and doesn’t get into any accidents at home. Would you know, however, whether she plays with the child, interacts happily, chats and encourages the child to communicate?
A nanny-cam will give you an idea, but can you force a person to provide the warmth and comfort that some childcare-givers naturally bring to their job?
It would be best to spend a good deal of time and energy on finding the right person and have several dry runs with her, where you leave your child for short periods, return and get a sense of how it is working for you, your child and for her. Without turning it into a “probe", you could get a good sense of her background, speak to other people she was employed with (though this is not always easy) and employ her for a trial period.
The local police are often at pains to tell residents to keep some basic details of the people they employ—perhaps not right up to the level of fingerprinting someone, but having a photograph, checking their name and permanent address. All this takes a great deal of effort and you may need to go through this process several times for several possible candidates.
Perhaps you should consider a good-quality, well-established daycare/crèche for your child. In such a place, there would be other children, multiple adults to provide care and recreation, possibly CCTVs installed already, if you feel you must have this one watchdog in place. It seems that there is more accountability in a professionally run place, as also in well-established “neighbourhood auntie" places which people recommend and have had a good experience with.
We recently got our son’s class XI science results and were shocked to see he had failed in almost every subject. He is a bright (but introverted) boy, and we’ve now discovered that he did not attend classes. We did not think we had to supervise or keep a check on him, and the junior college did not inform us about his poor attendance. Things went out of hand.
He is now depressed but says that if allowed to do class XII externally, he will make up and do better with the help of tuition classes (we now know he did not attend these either). His only explanation when we ask him is, “I became overconfident."
But we really wonder if he can cope now, or whether we should insist that he repeat class XI; he is not at all keen to do that. After our initial reaction, we are trying to keep the atmosphere at home friendly and helpful.
Kudos to you for trying to stabilize the mood at home in spite of the shock. Many parents are not able to get over the sheer waste, as well as the inexplicable lying, drifting, and self-delusion that goes with a youngster falling off the tracks in this way. They end up badgering, pleading, threatening, and revisiting the whole issue often, and in this way vitiating the home atmosphere as well as making it hard for the child as well as themselves to find the way forward.
While the results may have jolted him, it is important that he does not now make reckless and unrealistic stabs at making up for lost time. This would only set him up for more failure. If he has failed the exam, this means a lot of the fundamental aspects of his subjects, which should be in place in class XII, are not in place. You would need to talk to him about this, or have a concerned teacher get him to see this. Repeating a year is not just a “punishment" for failing, it is sometimes an opportunity to catch up on what you have simply let slide; he needs to understand this.
If he does insist on doing class XII directly, externally, you are going to have to play a stronger supervisory role, see that the school/college lets him do practicals and that he attends those diligently; and get feedback about his progress from his tuition classes.
Probe and find out if he has taken science by default, and whether his interests and aptitudes lie elsewhere. Also, find out what he did with his spare time when he did not go for classes or tuition. It’s important to get a sense of what he did with all that time on his hands, and to ensure that he does not now, out of guilt and fear perhaps, cut himself off from the usual leisure or “hang-out" activities so important to youngsters.
Gouri Dange is the author of More ABCs Of Parenting (Random House),and ABCs Of Parenting.
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