Nanny left 3yo unattended, what do I do?

[Catilla]

I don't often post on MN but have been lurking for several years. Unfortunately this is the first time I've felt the need to call on the collective wisdom that is Mumsnet.

My nanny has been with us for almost 6 months, and is our second nanny. She cares for DS (6) and DD (3) four days a week. She is lovely with the children and generally strikes a nice balance of interaction and discipline.

Today while out enjoying the summer holidays, an incident occurred: for some reason she left DD playing on playground apparatus while she took DS to get a drink at another part of the playground. For some reason DD decided that because she couldn't see nanny & DS, they must have left, so she walked out of the playground into the (big) park. Luckily she was "found" by a friendly other (stranger) mum who recognised her from earlier. After scouring the playground, nanny & DS came out of the gate and found DD.

It sounds like she has been quite panicked by the whole incident and handled the conversation with DD reasonably well. BUT IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED.

She told me about it just about as soon as she saw me afterwards, and was quite honest. However she didn't apologise or really indicate that she understands the fault was entirely hers. So now we are trying to decide how to handle this.

It seems the options are (she has a contract):

• dismiss for gross misconduct: lack of supervision (is this really gross misconduct?)... and we need new childcare immediately
• dismiss with notice, which she either works or we pay in lieu
• start disciplinary process: verbal/written/dismissal
• just discuss with her
• ignore (not an option!)

Can I go straight to written warning due to seriousness, so that if anything like this happens again she is out?

By way of background, I do have a number of other, less serious concerns, but the biggest are
(i) she has left DD with other people temporarily while collecting DS - people I know but without my explicit permission
(ii) she has previously shown less-than-ideal judgement on safety issues eg. letting DD go too far ahead on her scooter
The others are mostly niggles about not remembering to do things the way I've asked her to, and not being as clean & tidy as I'd like.

Can you please help me decide how to approach this?
And if I allow her the chance to improve, how to make sure she doesn't just hide such incidents from me.

Thankyou!

awful spelling, typing in a rush!

Good point dribble. In teaching interviews I've had more of the questions like you mention. As an interviewer of teachers I also tend to ask such questions... I.e. Tell me about a time when you dealt with... Etc. As you say, it is easy to talk the talk but you get more info from real situations/experiences.

I am pragmatic. If you do anything more than talk this through then she will leave and you need to work through the repercussions of that.

A credit to her was the fact that she owned up straight away.

My child loves the adventure playground and whilst I know that there are dangers and I am always watching, I cannot wrap her up in cotton wool forever (she is 3) and unless you want a child scared of life then boundaries must be continually pushed.

I often wish her next step would be towards me rather than further away but I have to let her explore, whilst keeping the external boundaries of safety in place.

It could be that she thought the child would still be in eyesight and it was simply a judgement error for a second. People worrying about kidnap and so forth need to grow up as they are gaoled by the nanny state. Hell, at 4 I was getting the bus to school ! The world has not changed that much !

She made an error, she owned up and I guess she will not make the same error again. On that basis, she is streets ahead of a new nanny who you know nothing about and who you are prepared to leave your children with.

The knee jerk reaction is to fire her but the sensible thing is to reward her honesty and listen to her explanation.

3point, letting a child explore is fine. Leaving a 3 year old alone in the playground is quite different.

As for 'people worrying about kidnap need to grow up' i don't know about kidnap but i know that my dd could be in the busy road in 2 minutes if she was left alone. And thats very dangerous. I wouldn't like to be one of the statistics and paper headlines.

No, i wouldn't reward the nanny for her honesty. I would be shocked that she thought it is not a big deal. And this from someone who is very 'children should be children, they should explore...' etc etc.

Tbh sometimes i read this section and feel i'm the odd one.
There is currently a thread about toilet roll. People get angry about extra sheet of toilet roll but not about toddler left alone?

Or, am i bizare with my priorities?

No, laquitar I TOTALLY agree with you!!

Anyway, it really doesn't matter if someone choses to take risks with their own children, that's fine. But we're CHILDCARERS and therefore should be even more careful about stuff like this. And I agree she shouldn't be praised for her honesty as she made it sound like no big deal (I may think differently if she was really upset and saying how very sorry she is etc - like a mindee's mum did when she let me ds2 run off into the road - I got confidence from the fact it scared her and she was upset!)

I completely agree with that, looneytune. I feel as a teacher of young children as well, that I should be extra careful!

Thank you looneytune, good to see i'm not alone.