Every child does things that are difficult. Tantrums. Hitting. Refusing food, refusing sleep, refusing to get in the car, refusing to do basically anything the adult in charge needs them to do. Some kids go through phases that make childcare genuinely hard regardless of how skilled the person doing it is. And some kids have more persistent behavioral patterns that require real experience and patience to navigate well.
What separates experienced nannies from people who are newer to childcare isn’t that the experienced ones never struggle. It’s that they’ve built up a kind of working knowledge about child behavior that changes how they approach it. They’ve seen enough kids across enough situations to have some perspective on what’s normal, what’s a phase, what’s a signal that something more significant is going on, and what usually works. That perspective is actually one of the more valuable things a family gets when they hire someone with real experience.
They Don’t Take It Personally
This sounds simple and it isn’t. A toddler telling you she hates you because you won’t let her have a third cookie before dinner is easy not to take personally once you’ve heard it a few hundred times. A seven-year-old who tells the nanny she’s mean and she’s not their real parent and she can’t tell them what to do is a little harder – especially if it happens regularly and especially if the nanny genuinely cares about that child and the relationship.
Experienced nannies have developed the ability to hold some distance between what’s being said and what it means. They understand that a child who’s dysregulated and angry isn’t actually giving them an accurate report on the state of the relationship. They understand that kids push limits partly to confirm that the limits are real, and that consistent, calm responses to that pushing are part of what makes a child feel secure. They’ve also learned to read the difference between behavior that’s really about the moment and behavior that’s a signal that something else is going on – more significant stress, a change in the home environment, something happening at school.
Not taking it personally doesn’t mean not caring. It means caring in a way that’s stable enough to still show up effectively for a child who’s having a genuinely hard time.
They Stay Calm When It’s Hard to Stay Calm
Any childcare professional can stay calm when a child is being easy. The test is what happens when a two-year-old has been screaming for forty-five minutes, or when a five-year-old just threw something at the nanny’s face, or when a situation has been escalating for an hour and there’s no clear end in sight.
Experienced nannies in Miami and everywhere else will tell you that their ability to stay regulated in those moments didn’t come naturally. It’s something that developed over time, partly through experience and partly through learning specific techniques for managing their own internal state in situations that would make most people reactive. Deep breathing sounds cliche, but it actually works. Slowing down physical movements. Deliberately lowering the voice instead of raising it. These are things people learn and practice, not just personality traits some people have.
The other thing experienced nannies understand is that co-regulation is real – a child who is dysregulated will often calibrate to the emotional state of the adult around them. Staying calm isn’t just about the nanny’s comfort. It’s actually a functional part of helping the child come down from whatever they’re in. An adult who escalates or gets visibly frustrated when a child is already dysregulated tends to make things worse. An adult who stays steady and warm and present tends to create the conditions where the child can settle.
They Know When to Redirect and When to Hold the Line
One of the things that takes real experience to develop is the judgment about which situation requires what response. Some difficult behaviors need to be redirected – the energy behind them acknowledged and channeled somewhere productive. Some situations require holding a clear limit regardless of the reaction it produces. And figuring out which is which, in the moment, for this particular child, in this particular situation, is not something anyone can learn from a book.
Experienced nannies have developed pattern recognition about this. They know which kids respond well to having choices offered and which ones find choices destabilizing. They know which behaviors tend to escalate if you engage them and which ones need direct engagement to resolve. They’ve learned that the same approach doesn’t work the same way with every child and even with the same child at different ages or on different days.
They’ve also learned to communicate clearly with parents about what works for a particular child. That communication is actually a significant part of what families are getting when they hire someone experienced. It’s not just that the nanny handles difficult behaviors well while she’s there. It’s that she can help parents understand patterns they might be too close to see.
They Follow the Family’s Lead – Even When They’d Do It Differently
This is a nuance that experienced nannies understand in a way that newer ones sometimes don’t. A nanny’s job is not to impose her own approach to child behavior on a family’s household. It’s to understand what the family values and how they want their children raised and to work consistently within that framework – while also bringing her expertise to support the family’s goals.
That means following the parents’ approach to discipline even when the nanny thinks a different approach would work better. It means not undermining limits the parents have set, even when the child appeals to the nanny as a softer authority. It means having the conversations about approach and philosophy directly with the parents when there are genuine disagreements, rather than just quietly doing something different when the parents aren’t around.
The best nannies are transparent about when they see something that concerns them and advocate clearly for an approach they think is in the child’s best interest. But they do it through honest conversation, not unilateral decisions. That’s what professional behavior looks like in this context.
They Know the Difference Between a Bad Day and a Real Problem
Every child has hard days. Difficult behavior on a bad day is not the same as persistent behavioral challenges that warrant a closer look. Experienced nannies have enough context to tell the difference, which is actually something families lean on more than they often realize.
When a nanny who knows a child well tells you that something seems off, it’s worth listening. She’s seen enough of this child’s normal to recognize when the behavior represents a real departure from it. That observation doesn’t mean anything is terribly wrong – it might be a developmental phase, a sleep issue, stress about something at school – but it’s information. And families who build real communication with their nanny create the conditions where that kind of observation gets shared rather than absorbed and ignored.
At Seaside Nannies, we match families with candidates based on more than just availability and credentials. We look for the kind of fit where the nanny’s experience and approach will genuinely work for a particular family’s children and values. Because the quality of that match is what determines whether all this experience and skill actually gets applied well, or whether everyone just spends their time managing the friction of a placement that isn’t quite right.
