Nannying = farming out your child - big mistake?

[WorkingMumD]

Hi, wanted some views. When I was in my 30s I was in London in a good job and so when I gave birth it seemed like the right thing to get a nanny to look after my daughter. Everyone did it! And it didn't seem weird. Now 17 years later, having talked to my daughter about it, I feel like it's the biggest mistake ever made.
She was traumatised by not having me around and couldn't tell me as she was so young and didn't want to upset her mummy. After 2.5 years of using a nanny, I felt it was wrong and so I did give up my job and we moved somewhere quieter and cheaper so I could be at home more with her, but the damage was done. She had a very very difficult teenage phase where we got on incredibly badly and now is able to say it tracks back to because she felt unwanted and unhappy when younger. She's now raised this a number of times, with me, doctors and mental health professionals. I'm quite devastated by it on a personal level as her dad and I worked so hard to try to give her a good, loving stable family home with everything she wanted - and she always seemed happy. I've told her I regret it, but I did change everything for her and the only way to put it right is by not doing it for her own children and by learning from it. I just wondered if anyone else had a similar experience? And/or what you would advise?

My mum was a SAHM and I was an awful teen with depression. There is no correlation with the nanny, she’s just being a teen and using it against you

Where did i say anyone was a shit mum ( note you never mentioned shit Dads) ? I stated the truth but it would seem many on here can't handle the truth.

Well that was you- you said children cry for their Mums…. Not their dads?

@Comefromaway away · Today 15:28
She sounds very priveleged and entitled.

I disagree with your comment. She is saying what she felt as a very young child. She must be allowed to say what her feelings were.

Young children are entitled to feel loved, and as it happens she didn’t. I don’t blame the OP either though.

Agree with this -
she’s found a stick to beat i with -

what’s the REAL issue ??

I cannot believe someone would choose to do a job which they believed was actively harming children. @LowlandLucky who does that?

Some people like to blame others and find labels for their own deficiencies.

I’ve seen this with my SIL. She blames her parents (my PIL) for everything she isn’t happy about. I don’t particularly like them either, but her issues are all her own doing!! She just likes to pass the buck and blame them for her poor decisions when actually she had a bloody lovely privileged childhood.

This not you then, completely dismissing that children might ever want their dad's not their mum's?!

No, you stated your opinion, not 'truth'. Your opinion is nasty, unkind and utter crap and you should be ashamed of yourself. Before you start I was a SAHM so no, there is no 'truth I can't handle'.

Women in the US often go back to work after six weeks, and there are not millions of traumatised people wailing about it.

I call bullshit. She needs to own whatever problems she's got going on and not throw her childhood (which she can't really remember) in your face.

@LowlandLucky what do you think about children who scream and cry about going into school? The ones that take a while to settle? Some are barely 4. Do you think the teachers judge the parents for bringing them in?

@Skinnermarink · Today 16:57
I also hope I would never come across you as a childcare worker, @LowlandLucky as you sound deeply unprofessional.

There didn’t seem to be anything whatsoever @LowlandLucky said that was unprofessional.

She simply reported a fact that she had, in the course of her work at a nursery, seen many instances of small children being extremely upset without their mummy.

@IncognitoAF · Today 18:06
Women in the US often go back to work after six weeks, and there are not millions of traumatised people wailing about it.

There are a great many children with problems and depressed teenagers. Who knows why but maybe mothers going back to work at six weeks isn’t great.

Well I don’t think I had a nanny. Though I’m sure I was in childcare or some sort as my mum worked. The point is, no one remembers very much at all (if anything) about what they were doing when they were 2….

Focusing in on what the OP has actually said, it's clear that some other parent has told the dd that she had a "messed up" early childhood. The OP's dd appears to have bought into this and is now using it as a convenient peg on which to hang all of her insecurities. This is compounded by the guilt that her mum inexplicably seems to feel about having used a nanny when dd was small, despite observing that the child seemed perfectly happy at the time.

The problem with this approach is that it's a distraction from whatever the real issues are that are making the dd unhappy. Unless she can identify and address the real problem, she won't be able to work through what she is feeling to an extent that she can actually be happy.

Judging the parents that have to work, want to work, need to work and use childcare, stating that children cry all day for their mummies and no one can handle the truth that nursery is a horrible desolate environment- having chosen childcare as your career- is unprofessional.

I have two friends who have worked extensively in multiple nurseries. Both have said that the kids who cry when their parents leave them generally stop within seconds of the parents going out of the door. They have both used nursery care for their own kids, and haven't had any qualms about this. Though they have had opinions on which nurseries are better than others, inevitably.

No vested interests here as we didn't need to use nursery for our dd.

Christ I almost wish my DD cried for me at nursery - she’s off like a shot enjoying herself and then it’s all “daddy daddy” when we are at home! Mummy doesn’t get a look in and I doubt she’d notice if i disappeared as long as she had someone else to supply her with snacks 🤣

im a SAHM btw before anyone comments that I clearly haven’t bonded with her as I’ve been too busy at work 😉

I worked in playgroup which i think is an excellent setting for children, in the late 90s our setting choose to move into full daycare for babies aged 6 weeks+ 5 years later i left.

Sounds like a lovely secure attachment!

I do remember my dd occasionally crying when I came home from work because she was enjoying her game with the nanny's daughter and didn't want her to go home! Thankfully, nanny was very generous with her time and would usually sit and chat to me while they finished off their game!

5 years of damaging children? Seems unethical.

I've left jobs because of ethical issues. Clearly you don't.

actually I have memories from younger than that....not coherent ones but definitely memories.

1. I can remember when I was 2 years 2 months old. And 2 years 8 months. Both times were traumatic (the second one I was in a car hanging off the edge of a cliff with the sea underneath!).

1. The research shows that a stable caregiver (ie nanny) is just as good for attachment as a parent. Kids have attachments to more than one person and having a nanny around for years likely actually gave her more attachment benefit, not less! It could be argued that nanny leaving was traumatic, but unless you actually weren't around at all until she was 4, then she wouldn't have been psychologically harmed according to actual attachment research (rather than the pop research that appears online).

1. I hope if you haven't you ask her why she's not directing this at her father. If she's got sexist views about women's work then that needs to be addressed.

1. The woman who said all this to her is just talking bollocks!

1. Get her involved in some volunteer work, no more therapy about this. I'm involved in that field do know it has huge benefits, but I also know there are therapists quite willing to take money to discuss things when not focusing on it for an hour a week (minimum because maybe she got homework too) and having it validated by a professional can be beneficial too. Being self-centred is part of growing up but it does no harm to pack boxes at a local food bank for example, or for refugees - or something else - to help put their lives in some perspective. That may sound harsh but it's time for other ideas and people to be in her head alongside this one about you.

Good post!

It's actually other kids mums who said her early years sound 'messed up' and 'not the way to bring a child up'

Get these people out of your life and your daughter’s life.

Get your daughter a new therapist.

There is no way she was traumatised by the nanny unless there is a huge drip feed (you didn’t see her for weeks on end, the nanny was abusive …)

She has simply picked up on this idea for the “other kids mums”. Absolutely toxic.