We asked Leonie to be our nanny to help with our 3 young children (6, 2 & 6months) during my wife’s long deployment with the military. Leonie seemed great at first, she was enthusiastic and said she understood the difficulties of deployment. I knew she had little baby experience but she seemed keen to learn. For 5 weeks all was good and then, on the day my wife deployed, the messages started, expressing all the things Leonie was unhappy about. These included changing my children’s nappies, the amount of stairs we have in our home, being asked to clean up after the children and the fact that she worked for 8 hours and didn’t get a break. Day 2 of the deployment, Leonie had not only quit, giving me less than 24 hours notice that she wouldn’t be coming to work the next day, but she reported my family to social services (who spoke to me on the phone twice and closed the case). What was supposed to help our family through the transition of a parent going away, made things so much harder. I will never be able to forgive Leonie for the pain she put my family through. She also took 2 weeks to repay us the money that I’d paid in advance for her to work for us. Perhaps Leonie is a great babysitter for older children but she certainly is not a good nanny for babies or a family who would expect her to do any level of housework.