Joyful Noise --About the Nanny

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Yes, I really was a nanny.   From October, 2001 until August 2004, after 20 years of running a day care home, I took a working sabbtical as a live-in nanny for a wonderful couple in Arlington, Virginia.  While I would never presume to have the kind of insight into home life that a career nanny has, the experience added profound depth to my understanding of child care and working families.

Now that I am well past the quarter century mark of caring for other people's children, I find that more and more parents, teachers and caregivers come to me for advice.  I want to be very clear that I am no doctor, psychologist, social worker or any other kind of person with fancy letters after my name who has learned about children in a classroom, institution or office. (See my resume.)   My humble experience and advice comes from years on the front lines and in the trenches of ordinary, daily life with hundreds of families and children.   The answers here are my own, personal opinion that springs from common sense, intuition, trial and error.

Lots of people also just want to know what it was like to be a nanny, or to spend year after year caring for little children, or to raise children in Northern Michigan.   I'm happy to answer all these questions, and this is the place to ask.   Be sure to tell me how old your child is!   I won't use any real names and the replies will be posted on The Nanny home page and archived in the articles section.



A decalogue of canons for observation in practical life:
  1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
  2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
  3. Never spend your money before you have it.
  4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
  5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
  6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
  7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
  8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
  9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
  10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith (son of his friend Harrison Smith, one-time editor of the National Intelligencer), 21 February 1825.   Four months later Jefferson died.
© 2008 Christine Bazzett