There’s a particular kind of professional misery that comes from being in a job that everyone involved knows isn’t working and nobody is willing to say out loud. It’s awkward in any employment context. In household staffing, where the employee is in your home every day and the stakes feel intensely personal, it can go on for months longer than it should because the social dynamics make it genuinely hard to start the conversation.
At Seaside Nannies, we’ve talked to families who knew within the first month that a placement wasn’t right but kept it going for six more months because they didn’t know how to initiate the ending. We’ve talked to nannies who were already quietly looking for other positions while showing up every day and going through the motions. We’ve watched both sides perform a version of “everything is fine” until something finally breaks the surface – usually either the nanny gives notice or the family finally calls us, and in both cases the response from the other side is almost always some version of “we kind of knew.”
Recognizing when this is where you are, and doing something about it, is genuinely hard. But it’s worth doing earlier rather than later.
What It Actually Looks Like
The signs that a placement isn’t working are usually gradual. Nannies start looking slightly less engaged. They’re doing the job competently but the warmth that was there at the beginning has faded. They’re not suggesting anything, not bringing creative energy, just executing tasks and going home. They’re also often slightly more careful – more by-the-book, more focused on covering themselves – which is a pattern that tends to appear when someone is already emotionally checked out of a position.
From the family side, it can look like the parents are slightly more guarded with the nanny than they used to be. Less casual conversation at handoff. More formal communication. A subtle shift in the energy when the nanny arrives or when parents come home at the end of the day. Sometimes families start noticing things they’d previously overlooked – small issues that they’re cataloging mentally in a way that suggests they’re building a case they haven’t consciously decided they’re building.
The kids usually notice before anyone will admit it. Children pick up on relational tension with the adults in their lives very reliably, and you’ll sometimes see behavioral changes in the kids that are really a response to the changed energy in the household rather than anything the child is going through on their own.
Why Neither Side Says Anything
The reasons families don’t initiate the conversation are pretty understandable. They don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. They’re not sure they’re reading the situation correctly and don’t want to make things worse by naming something that maybe isn’t there. They don’t know how to handle the practical logistics of ending a placement and having to start over. And in Austin, like everywhere else, there’s a genuine social discomfort around having this kind of direct professional conversation with someone who’s been in your home and around your kids.
The reasons nannies don’t say anything are somewhat different. Many nannies have financial situations where walking away from a position without another one lined up isn’t really an option. Some have been in situations before where they raised concerns and it was received badly, so they’ve learned to be cautious. And there’s also something about the nature of working in someone’s home that makes professional friction harder to name – it feels more personal than it would in an office, and the consequences of getting it wrong feel more immediate.
Both sides end up waiting for the other person to go first, and in the meantime, everyone is spending energy performing something that isn’t real.
The Conversation That Needs to Happen
When a placement genuinely isn’t working, the honest conversation is better for everyone than the continued performance. For families, that usually means being direct about what isn’t working in a way that’s factual and specific rather than vague. Not “we feel like the energy isn’t right” but something closer to “we’ve noticed the kids aren’t connecting the way we hoped” or “the household management isn’t working the way we need it to.”
For nannies, the honest conversation might sound like acknowledging that the position isn’t the right fit for where they are professionally, or that the family’s needs and their approach don’t align well, or simply that they don’t think the match is working well for either party. Most families actually respect this kind of directness from a nanny – it signals professionalism and self-awareness, and it makes the ending cleaner for everyone.
What makes these conversations hard is that both sides often have some guilt about the fact that it isn’t working, as if a placement not being right is a failure someone should own. It usually isn’t. It’s more often a mismatch – two parties who might each be good at what they do and who just aren’t the right fit for each other. That’s something Seaside Nannies works hard on the front end to prevent, but it does happen, and it’s not evidence of anyone doing something wrong.
What to Do When You’re in This Situation
For families: if you’ve been sensing for a while that this isn’t working, it’s worth trusting that instinct and reaching out to your placement agency sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the more entrenched the situation becomes. A good placement agency can help you think through whether what you’re experiencing is a fixable mismatch or something that’s more fundamentally not right, and can support the process of transitioning out of the placement with appropriate care for everyone involved.
For nannies: if you’ve reached a point where you’re just going through the motions, it’s worth being honest with yourself about whether this placement has a realistic path to getting better. Sometimes it does – if there’s a specific issue that could be addressed in a direct conversation, having that conversation is always worth trying before assuming the situation is unsalvageable. But if you’ve already tried to address what isn’t working and things haven’t changed, or if you know at a gut level that this isn’t the right fit and there’s nothing wrong that could be fixed, it’s better to be honest about that earlier than to stay too long.
The placements that end well – even the ones that end – are the ones where both parties were honest with each other and where the transition was handled with mutual respect. That’s a better outcome than a placement that limps along past its natural end point and finally dissolves in frustration. At Seaside Nannies, our interest is always in the long-term health of both the families and the professionals we work with, and that means supporting honest endings just as much as strong beginnings.
