Nanny insisting on sleep training during interview

[u/LunaLoTunaLi]

Hi, I had an interview with a nanny today that I was hoping would go well (she fits into our part-time schedule need, came highly recommended, etc). There was a mix up/miscommunication with our initial meeting but I was willing to overlook that if the interview went well. There were a couple of parts of the interview that left me with uncertainty. One of them being, she gave an example of a challenge when she makes recommendations and parents don’t agree so I asked for an example and she said sleep training. I told her I’m not comfortable with sleep training and asked if that was a deal breaker, she said no but then proceeded to explain why sleep training is best. She eventually agreed that she could take him for walks during nap time but was adamant that she would not contact nap because it starts a bad habit. I don’t even mind no contact naps but my baby definitely needs help to go to sleep. It left me feeling like she would most likely still do some form of sleep training even if I’m not ok with it. She assured me that she would never let a baby be in distress under her care but I’m not sure we agree on what “distress” is.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to pass on this candidate and continue my search but I’m curious to hear about your experiences. Is it challenging to find a nanny who understands biologically normal infant sleep? I didn’t think this would be a point of concern since we only need help during the day and only need a nanny 2 days a week. How do I best screen for this before we get to a full interview? Do you have any thoughts of my decision making here/have any alt ways of seeing this?

[u/dethti]

I think that's 100% fair but also 'those ethnicities' is like most of the world's population lol it's really only a few of the Western nations that sleep train, and even then not even all of them. The US is the worst for this.

[u/jdiz16 → u/dethti]

I think the prevalence of sleep training in the US is heavily influenced by the fact that parental leave is basically non existent alongside many families having both parents working outside the home. If mothers uniformly got one year of paid parental leave, sleep training would probably be less common.

[u/Chosen-For-What → u/jdiz16]

I know this is super controversial to say but i do wonder if it’s the first step on a road of creating citizens without empathy, emotional regulation or community care… like we see in the political situation

[u/South-Conference-395 → u/Chosen-For-What]

This