How to get our children to respect the caregiver 2026

In addition to helping us, the caregiver has the role of participating in our children's education when we are not there, which is why it is important for children to respect her and see her as an authority figure.

If she is not giving that image, it could be due to many factors: she is inexperienced, perhaps young, she is a foreigner and feels insecure about how to act with children, she sees them very occasionally... And then, surely, behavioral problems will occur or, to put it bluntly, they will completely ignore her. What can we do to make them respect it?

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Be clear

All people involved in the education and care of our children have to be in the same boat. Children are true experts at testing adults and will do so constantly. Since Arturo knows that his mother is not going to buy him buns when he leaves school, he will surely try the grandmother who picks him up this afternoon or the lakangurola next week, to see if it works. Of course, each person has their own style and will try to do their best depending on the occasion, but it is important to agree on some basic rules: if industrial pastries are prohibited and bedtime is at half past eight, we all have to be aware of these rules and put them into practice.

Give authority

The little ones have to perceive that the babysitter is an extension of the parents' authority. Therefore, she must know what the limits are and what to do if children exceed them and disobey them.

“The little one I was taking care of last year had a lot of temper,” explains Arely, nanny of a five-year-old boy. "One day we were with his mother at the pool and he insulted me. She said absolutely nothing, she didn't even scold him," he says. A good way for children to obey the babysitter, too, is to establish a points table and have it continue during the babysitter's working hours. For example, if we are going to reward our child for picking up his toys, you can give him a sticker if he also does so with it. In the same way, if the child has behaved really badly and sunanny has punished him without TV, it must be carried out. If we do not agree with any of their decisions, we tell them, but never in front of the child. With the issue of discipline we have to be very clear with our style and tell her: if we are in favor of the thinking chair, that punishments are left for extreme cases, that we never hit...

Establish routines and norms

Study schedules, TV schedules, play schedules, sleep schedules... Although they will surely try to skip them as soon as they have the opportunity, routines give children security, which is why it is especially important that they are followed when their reference figures are far away. It is also convenient to follow those day-to-day rituals: we bathe and have dinner (not the other way around), I use my red glass to drink water...

Communication with the babysitter must be fluid

We are the ones who best know how our children function and what phase they are in. All this information, although sometimes it seems irrelevant, is very useful for the person who cares for them: "After the babysitter told me, crying, that she couldn't take it anymore and was going to quit work, we started talking about the specific problems. In the end, it was simply a matter of time. My son gets unbearable when they force him to do things quickly. It was enough to share my tricks with the babysitter: give him ten minutes' notice that he has to stop playing, start to prepare beforehand when we have to go out... From then on everything was better,” Celia tells us. If we are implementing a new strategy or a change in habits, they must also be done with the caregiver. In the same way, if our son has been restless over the weekend, has problems at school, is sleeping badly... his caregiver has to know.

It is important to find the right time to talk to her. Many times these are hasty conversations at the school door or when the caregiver is already out of work hours. We must find the moment to be able to chat calmly and, in addition, use the means at our disposal so that communication is fluid (a WhatsApp to ask how they ate, an email mid-morning on Monday telling them what we did over the weekend...). And of course, for it to be real communication, it has to be two-way. The nanny, either because of the number of hours she spends with our children or because of her experiences with other children, can share strategies or ideas that can be very useful for us.

Advisors: Vanesa García, child psychologist at House and Kids (www.houseandkids.es) and Becky Kavanagh, co-president of the International Nanny Association (www.nanny.org).