Keeping a Journal

A lot of the nanny sites say that families may ask you to keep a journal of your days with the kids. I have to admit, if a family had asked me to do that I might have pouted about it. I love to write, but not when I'm being forced to. It's like when I was little, taking piano lessons. I used to cry through my whole big half an hour of practicing. I hated it and I hated that my mom forced me to do it. She finally got sick of fighting with me and told me I didn't have to take piano anymore. Eureka! As soon as she said I didn't have to I would sit for hours and play. Go figure. Needless to say, that little valuable lesson has been very helpful with rearing other people's children. Okay, back to the journals. I never did have a family ask me to do that. However, my second nanny job was with a 4 month old little boy who was the most amazing, good-natured baby ever! I fell in love with him and his parents immediately. Both parents worked in the city (NYC) and we lived in Jersey so they were gone a large part of the day and evening. I have had jobs before where parents would come home and just want to unwind but these parents were great with their baby who I will call "Aidan" because I really like that name, and I haven't talked to that family yet to make sure it's okay to use them on my blog. Anyway, they would come home and spend every minute with Aidan and make sure he knew they loved him and missed him. It wasn't too long into this job that I started to feel so bad for the parents. I was getting to play with Aidan and watch him grow all day and they were missing out on all the adorable things he would do every day. That's when I decided to start a journal. I used my creativity to make my entries humorous. When Aidan would go to bed at night, his parents would come down to the kitchen and read about Aidan's day and laugh their heads off. I know this made them feel so much better about missing all his firsts...steps, words, etc. I am so glad I did that for them and I know they appreciated it as well. I am working on getting a copy of the journal to post some entries on here to give you some ideas to get started on your own. I believe as nannies we have a responsibility to the children to help document their childhood. That is usually the parents' job but since they aren't around, it falls to us.