"She calls me Mummy and says she loves me. Should I quit?"

Your daughter loves me more than you.

I’m the woman who cuddles your children while you are at work.

I kiss away their tears while you are clocking up the k’s on the treadmill at the gym.

I wash their paint stained fingers and brush their tangled mops of hair.

I genuinely think they are great kids – and I honestly believe that they love you, their mother.

But the problem is they love me more.

I need the job. I need the cash. I like the hours. I love the location – and the car and pool aren’t bad either. Life is good as a Nanny.

This family treats me well and actually pay me like they value what I do unlike many others I have worked for.

What’s making me uncomfortable is the four-year-old girl I look after. I have her for three full days a week, and I take her to kinder the other two and pick her up in the afternoon.

On the days we are together we have great fun, we attend playgroups and go to the zoo, in summer I take her to the beach and together we do the family grocery shopping.

I spend more with her than any other adult in her life. I know that might seem bittersweet but she’s a very happy kid.

A delight in fact.

What isn’t delightful though is when she calls me “Mummy”.

"Mummy, I love you more than my real Mummy,” she says.

I try, I really do. I tell her how much her mum loves her and how hearing that might make her mum sad but she just smiles and cuddles up and calls me mummy again.

I don’t tell her I love her back I just say what a great girl she is, how smart she is, and how wonderful she is for being so kind and caring, but the positive reinforcement doesn’t distract her.

The other day she told me, “I want you to be my real Mummy and to take me home with you”.

My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach became liquid heat. What are you meant to say to that?

My deepest fear is that there is a reason this little girl is saying this to me, that there is a reason she won’t say she loves her mother.

I have thought about talking to my employer - her mother - but I just don’t know whether I will keep my job.

I’m not a mother myself so I don’t know how she would feel...will she be jealous? Understanding? Realistic? Or bitter.

Is this a chance I want to take? I could lose my job.

What’s your advice? How should this nanny handle the situation?

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