The child in the middle

My collaborator Lourdes and I dropped by a different children’s playground within the same park complex. With low trees and big rocks, it features a natural setting. We sat at a concrete picnic table and Lourdes struck up a conversation with a talkative Latina nanny who fed her blonde client toddler. She spooned out pasta in tomato sauce from a plastic container she had brought from home. The boy gobbled it hungrily while strapped into his stroller. As I sat down beside them, the nanny explained to Lourdes that the mother never fed her son real food, only gave him formula and Gerber baby food, yet he was 15 months old. There was very little food in the house, and everything was nonfat or lowfat, she added. The boy often acted very hungry, always crying for food when the nanny ate something, so she had begun to bring him food from her home on a daily basis. He told her he was full and she took him out of the stroller. We studied the boy anxiously, straining to determine if his height and weight were normal. At first glance he appeared diminutive, but then I noticed his head looked too large for his skinny body. Lourdes compared him to her grandson who is 12 months and much larger, eating absolutely all foods, no formula and way past baby food jars.

Children should begin to use a spoon and sample new strained foods between 4 and 6 months of age. Cereals are first, followed by vegetables and fruit and finally, by 7 or 8 months, meat and protein alternatives. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises introducing babies between 8 and 12 months to finger foods and mashed and ground up table foods. By 15 to 18 months most children can feed themselves with a spoon and no longer need help. Conventional wisdom dictates the child should be eating the same meals as parents by approximately one year of age.

The nanny pulled a bag of fresh pineapple slices from her bag. Suddenly the boy ran up and reached for them and made a sound. “You want some? Ok,” and she gave him a slice. What does the doctor say about this, Lourdes and I asked. His mother is a doctor, she replied. This is an only child, so the mother is doing what she thinks is right. And the nanny is doing what she thinks is right. She buys and brings food for him without permission and without compensation. Clearly, communication between employer and employee is compromised.

A mother was depriving her child of proper nourishment, and the nanny had grown so accustomed to the situation she chatted about it with total strangers. Did she want someone to report it? I should have asked how long she had worked for the family, how long she had carried on this secret mission. She was very affable and somewhat amused by her employer’s lack of knowledge and experience. She had spoken to Lourdes in Spanish not knowing how much I could understand. As the nanny walked away to join her friends sitting on a picnic blanket with the other children, they eyed me seriously and the boy wolfed down his pineapple. They were in collusion, sharing the blame, the food, the confusion. The nanny found support in her labor network. But it illustrates how employees and employers need to work together.

On the employer’s side, this echoes themes in Searching for Mary Poppins, 2006, Hudson Street Press, in that this mother could be isolated in her professional life without an employer network or parenting classes in which to share information and get feedback. If she is indeed a doctor, her position may make it difficult to reveal her lack of knowledge and ask questions about certain topics such as infant nutrition. With families flung far apart, there may be no family member she could ask. Whatever the circumstance, this mother is alone making potentially harmful decisions about a child’s welfare, and the nanny uses her power and influence to counter them.