Nannies and children: when others help raise your child

Three-year-old Luka trips on the terrace step. For a moment he is silent, then he bursts into tears and runs — past his mother, who has just come home and crouched down to catch him, straight into the nanny’s arms. “Ana, it hurts!”

His mother stays half-crouched. Nobody says anything. The nanny comforts the child, the mother smiles and goes to put down her bag. But in the evening, when the house is quiet, the scene keeps coming back to her. Does he love me less? Have I lost him? Am I a bad mother because I wasn’t there?

If this scene feels familiar, you are not alone. Many parents who have help with raising their children — a nanny, grandparents or someone else — know that small sting. In this piece I will explain what attachment research says about children who are raised by several people, why Luka running to his nanny is not a bad sign, what a child needs from a nanny and what from their parents — and how to help a child when the nanny one day leaves.

When a child runs to someone else

Let’s start with the sting, because it is real and deserves to be taken seriously. When a child in distress chooses someone else, an old, deep fear can be triggered in parents: that they are not enough, that someone has replaced them, that they have missed something that can never be made up. In parents who work a lot or travel, guilt often joins in — and guilt likes to find proof. A child running to the nanny offers itself as perfect proof.

But children don’t run to the person they love most. In a moment of pain they run to the person who is nearest and who has been there all day. Ana saw Luka fall, knows where he hurt himself and has been his steady point for the last eight hours. His mother arrived a minute ago. Luka did exactly what a child with well-developed attachment does: in distress, he sought out the safe person who was available. That is good news — it means the child has learned that the people around him comfort him.

A child can have more than one person

John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, initially emphasised one main attachment figure, usually the mother. But it soon became clear that the picture was richer. In 1964, Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson followed 60 babies in Glasgow from birth to 18 months. They found that by the end of the study most children had several attachment figures — mother, father, grandparents, older siblings. And the strongest attachment was not necessarily to the person who fed and changed the child, but to the person who responded to them and engaged with them.

Later research confirmed this for people outside the family too. Lieselotte Ahnert, Martin Pinquart and Michael Lamb, in a meta-analysis of studies on children’s relationships with childcare workers and other carers, found that children can form secure attachments to them. This attachment doesn’t replace the attachment to the parents; it runs alongside it. A child can be securely attached to their mother, securely to their father and securely to the nanny — and each relationship is its own.

The third finding is key as well. The large American NICHD study of early childcare followed more than a thousand children in the 1990s and examined whether care outside the family in itself threatens attachment to the mother. The answer was, broadly, no. What predicted insecure attachment was above all lower parental sensitivity, and the risk rose when this was combined with long hours or poor-quality care. In other words: it matters less how many hours your child spends with the nanny than what happens in the hours they spend with you.

You can read more about how attachment patterns develop in Attachment styles: the four patterns we learn closeness by and in the knowledge base under attachment.

What a child needs from a nanny

A good nanny is not just someone who makes sure the child is fed, clean and safe. For a small child, while the parents are away, she is a secure base: a person they can move away from to explore and return to when something frightens them. That is why the things that matter in a nanny are not the ones you find on a CV.

• Responsiveness. Does she notice when the child is upset before they start crying at the top of their voice? Does she respond with closeness or with a solution?
• Continuity. For a child, one and the same nanny for three years is worth far more than three excellent ones who change every year.
• Calm. A child learns to settle alongside an adult — we call this co-regulation. A tense, anxious carer can’t provide it, however well qualified she is.
• Loyalty to the parents. A good nanny helps the child love their parents rather than competing with them. She doesn’t speak badly of them in front of the child and helps them wait for their return.

What a child needs from parents when others are looking after them

Parents who work a lot often think they have to make up for quantity with quality — with outings, gifts, special experiences. But what a child needs above all isn’t something special. It is something predictable: knowing when you’ll come, getting all of you when you arrive, not you with a phone in your hand, and having something with you that belongs only to the two of you. Bath time in the evening. The same bedtime story. Saturday breakfast.

The moment of arrival matters too. Many children show their worst side when a parent comes home — they cry, get angry, turn away. That isn’t rejection; often it is exactly the opposite: with you they dare to let go of what they have been holding in all day. With the nanny they were “good”; with you they can be tired. I describe how attachment patterns pass from parents to children in Attachment and parenting: how the pattern passes to a child.

Parental guilt and jealousy

Guilt is almost unavoidable for parents who have help, especially mothers. Society sends them contradictory messages: be successful, but be at home; get help, but don’t let someone else raise your child. I have written more about this in Mother’s guilt: why the most devoted mothers are the ones who feel they do too little.

Alongside guilt, jealousy often appears — of the nanny who sees the child more, who knows which cartoon they love this week, who is the first to hear a new word. Jealousy is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a sign that you care. But it becomes a problem when it starts to drive what you do: when a nanny is replaced because the child has become too attached to her, or when a parent starts asking the child whom they love more. A conversation between two parents struggling with this might sound like this (a composite, not a real person):

Maja: “He ran to Ana again today. Maybe I should find another nanny. He’s too attached.”
Tomaž: “Would you really want him to lose someone he loves so that it’s easier for you?”
Maja (after a silence): “No. I just want to know I’m still his mum.”
Tomaž: “You are. That’s why, at night when he can’t sleep, he calls for you, not Ana.”

Maja in this scene doesn’t need another nanny. She needs someone to help her separate two things: what she feels and what the child needs. When this guilt doesn’t ease and spreads into other areas, it is worth looking at where it comes from — often from your own childhood.

Working together: the nanny is not a rival

What helps a child most is when the adults around them work as a team. That doesn’t mean everything has to be the same — children easily understand that the rules with the nanny are a little different from those with Mum. But it does mean the adults agree on important things and don’t undermine each other in front of the child.

In wealthy families something else often happens: the nanny witnesses family tensions and unintentionally becomes part of a triangle. One parent confides in her about the other; the other asks her to report what goes on at home. When parents separate, the nanny may even become an ally of one side — and a child who is attached to her loses yet another independent safe haven. I describe how to protect a child from their parents’ dispute in Divorce with significant wealth: how to protect your children from the fight.

A few simple agreements help: a short conversation at every handover, shared rules for sleep, food and screens, and a clear understanding that the nanny hears nothing about the parents’ disputes and passes nothing on.

When the nanny leaves

Nannies leave. The child starts nursery, the family moves, the nanny finds another job or retires. For adults this is a staffing change. For a child who was attached to her, it is a loss — sometimes the first real loss of their life.

In the 1960s and 1970s, James and Joyce Robertson made well-known films about young children separated from their people for a few days or weeks. They showed how deeply a sudden, unexplained separation affects children — and how much it helps when someone they know guides them through it and when they can talk about the person who is absent. The same applies to saying goodbye to a nanny: what affects the child is not so much that she leaves, but how she leaves.

For a while your child may be more tearful, cling to you more, sleep worse or slip back in things they had already mastered. This is grief sized for a small person, and there is no need to stop it. It helps to talk about the nanny when they mention her, rather than changing the subject. If the goodbye is truly good, the child takes from it not only a loss but also the experience that people can part with love.

It may also be worth thinking about yourself. You too became attached to the nanny, trusted her with the most precious thing you have and saw her every day. If her leaving hurts, you are not overreacting.

Exercise: a handover that tells your child something

The handover — the moment you take your child from the nanny or hand them over to her — happens every day and is one of the most valuable opportunities you have. This week, try doing it like this:

1. Pause at the door. Before you go in, take thirty seconds. Put your phone away, breathe out and decide that the next ten minutes belong to your child.
2. Greet your child first, adult matters later. Crouch down to their level and name them: “Hello, Luka. I missed you.”
3. Ask the nanny one nice thing in front of your child. “What was lovely today?” Your child hears that their two worlds are connected and that the adults talk about them with goodwill.
4. Leave the logistics for later. Complications, problems and questions about pay can go by message or into a conversation when your child isn’t around.
5. Name the transition. When the nanny leaves, wave together and say when your child will see her again. That way they learn that people don’t disappear; they go and they come back.

At the end of the week, write down what you noticed. Did your child respond differently when you arrived? Did anything change in you?

Where this doesn’t apply

Everything so far applies to a good nanny and parents who are present enough. Some situations call for a different answer.

When a child is afraid of the nanny — if they freeze when she arrives, change suddenly, have unexplained injuries or say something that alarms you — this isn’t a question of attachment but of safety. Act at once and talk to your paediatrician. If you suspect abuse, you can call the police in Slovenia on 113, or 112 in an emergency; counselling is also available at the social work centre.

When nannies change too often, a child can’t develop trust in any of them. Then it doesn’t help to look for a better nanny, but to think about why nannies keep leaving.

When a nanny stands in for a parent who is emotionally absent — because of burnout, depression, addiction or serious difficulties in the relationship — the question isn’t about the nanny but about the parent. Then the first help is a conversation with a doctor or therapist for that parent, not new childcare rules.

And finally: not every bit of stress around childcare is a sign that something is wrong. Some children find separations harder, and that doesn’t mean the choice of care is a bad one.

Where talking can help

People rarely come to therapy because of a nanny. They come because of guilt that won’t ease, because of tension in the couple when they disagree about how much help to have, or because of a feeling that they don’t know their own child. Often in these conversations it turns out that the question about the nanny is really a question about your own childhood — about who was there for you when you were small.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we pay particular attention to such patterns. For parents who themselves grew up with nannies, boarding schools or absent parents, a longer session such as A Look into the Past can be useful: together we draw a genogram and look at how care has been passed down from generation to generation in your family. I also work with English-speaking clients.

What to remember

• A child can be securely attached to several people at once — to a nanny not instead of the parents, but alongside them.
• When a child in pain runs to the nanny, it means someone who was there knows how to comfort them — not that they love you less.
• What matters most for the bond with a parent is the quality of time together, not the number of hours in care.
• A nanny leaving is a loss for a child: tell them in advance, prepare a goodbye and let them talk about her.
• Guilt and jealousy are understandable, but they must not make decisions in place of the child.