I want to leave my current position and get another nanny position. I have been here almost a full year and dealt with all kinds of things. I am very bonded to the daughter and I have tried to work with the family to resolve some things. When I brought these things to the family's attention, they behaved punitively towards me, shutting me out, not talking to me for awhile, being curt, etc. The problem has been the behavior of the five year old boy. The behavior has me in a very difficult position because I am from Ireland and this is my first nanny job and I need a reference. I have references from Ireland for nursey, but you can see why I would need their reference. The problem with getting a reference is not going to be my job performance, but that I will need to make some sort of formal report about the child before I leave because his sister is just not safe so long as the family continues to ignore his behavior problems.
A handful of examples I will give you, he put sewing pins in the dog's bed in his crate and shut the dog in there to "see what would happen", he poured his sister a glass of orange juice and a glass of purple colored household cleaner in side by side glasses and challenged her to a taste test. Here, he said, he wasn't really going to let her drink, he just wanted to see what she chose. The family has a gas stove and he plays with the knobs, usually only when I am cooking, to shut things off or turn things higher, but as you can imagine, this could be deadly.
He also takes very dangerous risks with his own behavior, sliding down a banister, hanging over the upstairs banister, tying a rope from a downstairs door to an upstairs door and trying to hand slide down it. Just to be clear, the reason I am leaving is because since coming to work here, I have had so much anxiety and am always on edge. When I go home, I am worried about the younger child. The parents do not take anything I say seriously. I am an outsider in this community and don't know who I would approach for help, so I have been advised that I should make a phone call to Children's Services. I don't have any problem doing this and using my identity, because the parents do not want to deal with their son's issues. They are both extremely detached from both children. My question to you is how do I time this? I am alone in the US and have one roommate. She has become a friend but is a roommate first so she has no friendly loyalties to me to help me should I become short on rent. I want to extricate myself from this situation and know that both children will get the help they need, but that I have my reputation intact and another job to switch to. Has anyone ever been in such a situation?
