What Makes a Great Nanny (And Why It's Rarely the Thing on Their CV)
What Makes a Great Nanny (And Why It's Rarely the Thing on Their CV)
It's National Nanny Recognition Week, which is as good a reason as any to write down something I've been thinking about for a long time.
I've been in this work for over a decade : first as a nanny myself, then building a team of them, and these days helping families find the right person for their home. I've met a lot of nannies. I've watched a lot of first days. And the thing that predicts whether it will work is almost never the thing at the top of the CV.
Qualifications matter. A Diploma, first aid, a Blue Card, real experience with the age group - those are the baseline, and we don't put anyone in front of a family without them. But they're the entry fee, not the difference.
Here's what the difference actually looks like.
They notice
A great nanny picks up that a child is a bit off before anyone has said a word. Quieter than usual. Not eating much. Standing slightly apart from the other children. They can't always tell you why they noticed, but they act on it - by slowing down, sitting closer, offering something familiar.
This is the single hardest thing to teach and the easiest thing to spot once you know to look for it.
They're the same person every time
Children settle with predictability. Not rigidity - predictability. The same warmth on a Tuesday as on a Friday. The same response to a wobble, whether it's the first that week or the fifth. The same boundaries, calmly held.
A child who knows exactly what they're going to get from you is a child who can relax. That's where confidence comes from.
They follow the child, not the plan
There's a version of this job where you arrive with an activity, run the activity and tick it off. And there's the version where you arrive with an idea, notice that what the child actually wants is to spend forty minutes being a dinosaur in the garden, and go with it.
The second looks less impressive from the outside. It's almost always the better care.
They handle the hard moment without making it a big deal
Every day with a child contains something difficult. A meltdown in a public place. A refusal. Two children and one of something. A great nanny deals with it quietly, resolves it, and doesn't hand it to you at pick-up as a drama you now have to manage.
You'll often only find out it happened because they mentioned it in passing - honestly, without hiding it or inflating it.
They tell you the truth
Including when it's awkward. That your child was unsettled. That something isn't working. That there's a pattern they've been seeing for a fortnight and think you should know about.
A nanny who only ever tells you lovely things isn't giving you the full picture, and you need the full picture.
Why I meet every nanny in person
None of the above shows up on paper, which is why I've never been willing to place someone I haven't sat across from.
And honestly, the interview is the least useful part. What I'm watching is everything around it.
How they speak to the waiter. Whether they say thank you and mean it. What they notice in the space we're in - the child at the next table, the step someone's about to trip on, the thing that's been left where it shouldn't be. Whether they're present with me or performing at me. How they've presented themselves, not in terms of polish, but in terms of thought.
I can usually tell within a few minutes whether someone is a natural caregiver. It's not a mystical thing. It's whether care is what they do, automatically, when nobody has asked them to - or whether it's a mode they switch into when they're being observed.
You can teach almost everything else. You can't teach that.
Why our team is small on purpose
We could be bigger. Plenty of agencies are, and there's a model where you take everyone who meets the minimum standard, hold a database of hundreds and send whoever is free.
That's not what we do, and it's a deliberate choice rather than a limitation.
I know every nanny on our team. I know their strengths, the ages they're best with, who thrives at a loud wedding and who's better in a quiet home. When a family tells me about their child, I'm not filtering a spreadsheet, I'm thinking of specific people.
It also means our team actually know each other. They cover for each other, share what works, and turn up to events as a team rather than a group of strangers in matching shirts. Children feel that difference immediately, and so do families.
Small is harder to scale. It's much better care.
The good ones never stop learning
The nannies I want on our team are curious about children, not just fond of them.
They want to understand what's actually happening in a child's brain during a meltdown, and why "calm down" has never once worked. They know that a dysregulated nervous system needs co-regulation before it needs reasoning. They can tell you roughly what to expect from a four-year-old versus a seven-year-old, and adjust rather than take it personally.
Ask them who they learn from and you'll hear names like Maggie Dent and Dr Daniel Siegel. You'll hear about children's yoga, nature play, child-led approaches, and Montessori. They'll have read something recently, and have an opinion about it.
There's also a values piece that matters more to me than it might sound. I notice whether someone has thought about what they bring into a child's environment, the products they use, how they handle waste, whether they'd rather take children outside than put something on a screen. Not as a rulebook, but as a sign that they think about the whole child and the whole family, and about the world those children are growing up into.
The best nannies I know are holistic without making a thing of it. They're thinking about sleep, food, movement, emotional safety, the family's rhythm and the child's inner world, all at once, without ever announcing that they're doing it.
What this means if you're looking for one
If you're interviewing, the most useful questions aren't about qualifications. Try these instead:
Tell me about a time a child was upset and you couldn't work out why. What did you do?
What would you do if my child refused to do something I'd asked you to make sure they did?
Who do you learn from about children?
What's something you'd want to tell me that might be uncomfortable to say?
You're not listening for the right answer. You're listening for whether they've genuinely thought about it and whether they're honest with you when there's an easier thing to say.
And watch how they are with the people around them on the way in. It tells you more than twenty minutes of questions.
A word for the nannies reading this
Most of what I've described happens with nobody watching. There's no performance review for noticing a child is off. Nobody claps when you defuse something before it becomes something.
It's real work, it's skilled work, and it deserves to be recognised more than one week a year.
That's part of why we started Connected Caregivers — a community for nannies, au pairs and in-home carers here on the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Recognition is lovely. Connection is what keeps people going.
If you're looking for a nanny for your family — for a wedding or event, for casual nanny care, or as a permanent placement in your home — we'd love to hear from you.
You can book casual nanny care at timmyandtammy.com/book-a-casual-nanny, or get in touch to talk about a placement.
