Let's be honest, nannying for a college student is like a dream job! It's tax-free money, with minimal effort, no uniforms and usually a pretty flexible schedule. But after babysitting since I was 13 and having six nannying jobs in college, I've learned so many things that I promise myself I will never let my children do. Here are my five learned parenting lessons from being a nanny.
1. Manners
It never fails that every single family I've ever nannied for, the kids almost always never use their manners. I have to constantly remind them to say please and thank you to me. When I'm a parent, my kids will always say sir, ma'am, please and thank you.
2. Be independent.
With every family I babysit, if there are older kids, I expect them to somewhat take care of themselves and even be my helper with the younger siblings. But it's crazy how much the older kids ask me to do for them. For example, with one family I watched, every morning the 10-year-old would ask me to get a bowl of cereal for him while I was in the middle of making breakfast for his 5-year-old sibling and feeding the baby a bottle. When I asked him if his mom made him cereal every morning he said yes. Oh. I will expect my kids to be independent when it comes to things like this that they are old enough to help themselves with.
3. Clean up after themselves
I can't even tell you how many kids I've watched that don't clean up after themselves, even when they are perfectly capable of doing so. My least favorite family I've watched, the parents told me it was my job to clean up everything, toys and all. Even make the children's bed and clean up dirty clothes for them. I wasn't even allowed to ask the children to help me. My favorite family put on music every time it was time to clean up. And we all pitched in to clean up our mess. Rest assured, my kids will be like the latter.
4. Know the concept of money
I cannot tell you the number of times every single kid I've babysat for has asked me to buy them this or that. Or "Can we go get cherry berry?" "Can we go put putting?" "Can we go bowling?" "Can we go to the movies?" My reaction to these questions is, "Kids, those things cost money — money that your parents don't give me." Their response is, "Well you have money!" Um, I don't babysit to spend all the money I make on entertaining other people's kids. And even in the future I won't spend 40+ hours a week to spend all my extra income taking my kids to ice cream every day. My kids will understand that doing those will be a luxury and something we do on special occasions.
5. Have patience.
I understand that kids don't normally know the concept of time. But it drives me up a wall when the kids I babysit for ask me things like, "Are we there yet?" as I'm pulling out of their driveway. Or tell me they are hungry and then as I'm cooking their lunch they ask me every 10 seconds, "Is the food ready yet?"
Basically, I've had way too many nannying jobs where I always go through the same things and have the same complaints about them. IDK if all kids are this way or if this is just how we are raising our kids nowadays. But I promise you that my kids will not act this way without knowing that it is wrong. I will instill in them these concepts as much as I possibly can so that my future babysitters/nannies don't have the same woes as I do.
