I’ll be the first to admit, setting clear boundaries is hard.
I used to take a friend’s child home with us from school for months because she was at work. It wasn’t a work day for me, and I was already collecting my own kids, so it made sense.
Only it was exhausting to look after someone’s kid plus my own every Wednesday afternoon. Finally I said I couldn’t do it anymore. I made up a fake after-school activity rather than explain that I was simply too tired.
See? Boundaries are hard. They require telling someone a reasonable thing you need and want, and then standing firm and confronting them if they don’t give that reasonable thing to you.
But we’re all grown-ups, and we get to say what is and isn’t ok.
For Emma, it was (sort of) ok for her long-term, live-in nanny’s boyfriend to live in a caravan on the family’s property.
He’d recently become homeless and the caravan was meant to be a stop-gap until he found a new place to live.
“Today she left our youngest (nine months) in the care of her boyfriend while she went and collected our son from preschool, which is a five-minute walk away,” Emma said in a post on the Mumsnet forum.
Nanny leaves charge with her boyfriend
For Emma, that was not on.
“We had our youngest’s car seat in our car and so she said she couldn’t take the baby with her. But she didn’t attempt to contact me or my husband, despite noticing the missing seat in the morning when she took our daughter to the park.
“I’m pissed off. Like I said, her boyfriend is a nice enough guy, but I don’t know him well enough to look after my child even if it was for under 10 minutes.”
Emma wasn’t sure if she was overreacting, but she felt like a firm line had been crossed.
Commenters were torn because the nanny had worked for Emma for so many years.
“If she’s normally a good nanny, I would not sack her, but I would be strong about that being unacceptable,” one person said. “Also reiterate that he should not be in the house during her working hours.”
“I’d sack her,” another said. “She left your baby with someone you said couldn’t be in the house to save her the hassle of taking the baby for a walk!”
“She should have known this wasn’t allowed. I find it a bit shocking honestly,” a third person said. “Kick the boyfriend out now. It’s wrong even if he is nice. I wouldn’t be surprised if you wanted to stop using the nanny as well.”
Others said Emma had let the situation go too far.
“I wouldn’t have let him move in in the first place,” one woman said.
*Names have been changed
