How to Speak Nanny

THE mother was annoyed with her nanny, and she went on the Web to vent. The nanny had fed the children a casserole that the mother had intended to serve for dinner. “Now I have to come up with something else,” she wrote on a popular site for mothers, exasperation radiating from the computer screen.

She might have been looking for sympathy, but she didn’t get much. Responses from other mothers to her query about whether they, too, would be irritated ranged from “If you didn’t tell her it was supposed to be for dinner, there’s no grounds for being annoyed” to “You’re a loon.”

But one really got to the heart of the matter: “A lot of you nanny employers are really bad at employer-employee communications.”

It’s true. Pop culture — stoked by the movie and the best-selling novel “The Nanny Diaries” and now by the newly published sequel, “Nanny Returns” — tends to paint mothers who employ nannies as over-entitled she-devils who pepper their hapless employees with unreasonable orders and micromanage them to the brink of nervous breakdowns. But the reality is different and more curious.

Many mothers who employ nannies are actually overstretched working women, a number of whom (contrary to their professional personas) suffer from an inability to clearly express their expectations and demands to the people they pay to care for their children. The result is a peculiar passive-aggressive form of communication, a less-than-ideal dynamic between worker and boss.

The mother, at times beset by guilt, a touch of intimidation or feelings of her own maternal inadequacy, fails to articulate what she wants from the nanny — and then complains to friends, her spouse or an Internet message board when she doesn’t get it. (The father in many cases steers clear of the whole relationship.)

Lisa Spiegel, a director of Soho Parenting, a family counseling center in Manhattan that tends to cater to urban professionals, witnesses such communication issues all the time. “I’ve seen C.E.O.’s, heads of companies, professors,” she said. “These are women who are very successful in work relationships, but the idea of talking to their baby sitter about unloading the dishwasher will give them cramps for a week.”

Some nascent efforts are beginning to emerge to address this puzzling communication gap. One approach seeks to empower the nanny to take the initiative and draw out the mother on her needs and wants. “The communication needs to be there, and if it’s not being initiated by the parents, it has to be initiated by the nanny,” said Lora Brawley, who lives outside Seattle and is the president of the National Association for Nanny Care, a nonprofit educational organization that aims to promote excellence in nanny care.

A Family Member, Up to a Point

IT’S all about saying what you mean.

While some parents have no trouble telling the caretakers who look after their children what to do, many others find it difficult to act like a boss to someone who can sometimes seem more like a member of the family than an employee.

“We find written communication helps,” said Sheilagh Roth, the executive director of the English Nanny and Governess School outside Cleveland, which has been in business for 25 years.

That can mean leaving a list of tasks for the day, but ideally it means drafting a written contract — or at least a detailed job description — explicitly stating the duties of the position, as well as the family’s obligations regarding vacation time, overtime, holidays and other basic matters that an employee needs to know. Ms. Roth requires a written contract when she places nannies with families.

Both she and Lisa Spiegel, a director of Soho Parenting, a family counseling center in Manhattan, advise scheduling weekly meetings between mother (or father) and nanny. They should be casual — just a chance to exchange observations and suggestions — but they should be at the same time every week so that each party knows to expect them. That way, no one has to stew about whether and when to bring up a touchy issue, because it can always be raised at the weekly session.

Ms. Spiegel said that it’s important for families to remember that their nanny is an employee and not a family member, no matter how much they love the person.

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