Maddy is a very experienced nanny – she is knowledgeable on routines to ensure order in the house, which can be very helpful. With that comes very strong views about what babies/toddlers should do or how they should act. While that can be valuable, we felt our wishes as parents and our parenting style were not followed/respected. Personally, I felt very hurt about the many times I felt I and our child were judged with comments such as ‘He is 18m, he should be used to this’ (referring to our baby not yet being able to put himself to sleep by himself at night).

Maddy helpfully accepted last minute to babysit our baby overnight. She offered to sleep train our baby, knowing that nights was something we had trouble with, but I told her that it didn’t make sense for us to sleep train him for a night only, so it would be only a regular ‘overnight’, he would be put to sleep by rocking and should he wake up at night, he should be given his bottle for comfort. We were particularly tired from a rough week at work and had guests sleeping over so it was particularly important that the night went smoothly. Maddy however insisted in letting our baby cry in the cot to put him to sleep, and later in the middle of the night as well. He got so upset in the middle of the night that I had to nurse him in order to calm him down, at which point Maddy said ‘it was never going to work like this so she was going to sleep’. At that point I had to take our baby to our own room and he slept with us. Maddy nonetheless requested she be paid sleep training price for a full night.

We had very different ideas of how overnight babysitting should run, but Maddy may be a good options for parents who have similar approach to her as to how children should be raised.

• Overall
• Cleanliness
• Communication