CONFESSIONS OF A NANNY
Baby sitter to the super-rich on the sad, messed-up lives of wealthy kids
What does it take to raise happy children? Not money, insists Chicago nanny Elena Mincheva. The 35-yearold native of Russia, who is married and hopes to soon have children of her own, spent almost a year working for one of the richest couples in America’s Second City. She is now writing a tellall book, “Millionaire Nanny,” about her experiences. Here, she reveals to The Post’s JANERIDLEYwhat life was like as a modern-day Mary Poppins in a household from hell. Y ELLING at the top of her voice, The Lady admonishes me for “not using my brains” and vows to fire me.
“You’re not working here any more,” she hisses. “It’s my house, and I can’t stand you.”
Her husband — who I term The Man — witnessing the argument, shouts back: “Actually, it’s my house. How about she stays and you leave?”
The fight was yet another unpleasant drama during my nanny job for multimillionaire parents living in the tony Gold Coast neighborhood near downtown Chicago. As usual, I was being used as a pawn in their warped relationship.
This standoff came almost a year
“There was a delivery of $300 worth of toys almost every day.” — Nanny Elena Mincheva
after I accepted the post in April 2014, excited about working for what seemed like the “perfect” family, headed by a fit-looking entrepreneur husband and a beautiful homemaker wife who used to be a model.
Relatively new to the US from Moscow, I was looking for a wellpaid, live-in baby-sitting job to indulge my passion for caring for kids. The family lived in a gorgeous six-bedroom townhouse, and my sleeping quarters were in the basement, near the children’s playroom.
My salary — $150 in cash per day, plus room and board, for 16 hours of work between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. — enabled me to save money. But I was hopeful it would be a long-term arrangement, where I could help raise the kids for years to come.
Even on my first day, the warning bells rang.
An important chore was cooking, and I rustled up some pasta for the kids, Isabella, 8, Cameron, 7, and 4-year-old Jack.*
The Lady, aged anywhere from 30 to 45 because she’d obviously had cosmetic surgery, swept into the gigantic kitchen. “Why didn’t you feed him?” she asked, pointing at Cameron, who hadn’t eaten a thing.
I didn’t know what she meant. She angrily walked across to the table, scooped up some pasta with his spoon and put it into his mouth. The boy swallowed eagerly. “You have to feed him,” his mother said. “He’s not going to eat by himself.”
He was 7 years old, but he didn’t feed himself. “What was coming next?” I wondered.
As the weeks went by, I was treated more like a dog than a nanny. Throughout my 16-hour day, I was constantly on my feet. If I wasn’t watching my charges, I was cleaning, cooking, shopping, running errands or doing laundry. I had no breaks and was entitled to just one Sunday off every two weeks.
But if I thought I was getting the short end of the stick, then I had to consider the kids. They hardly spent any time with their parents, who were mostly too busy or preoccupied to pay them attention.
At 6 a.m. on weekends, one of my duties was to sit and block the stairway to prevent Jack from bothering The Lady and The Man. He would wake up early and liked to go into their room for a cuddle.
“If you want to play with my phone, you have to go downstairs with me,” I told him. Taking a chance, I pulled his arms to me, trying to give him a hug.
“I hate you!” he shouted. “I want my mommy!”
“Mommy is busy, sweetie. She’s sleeping,” I said. “You’re lying,” he replied. “No, honey, Mommy is very tired, and she’s sleeping now,” I repeated.
All of a sudden, tears sprouted from his eyes. “I want to sleep with her,” he wailed. “Why doesn’t she want to sleep with me?”
The Lady’s solution to everything was to order stuff from Amazon. There was a delivery of $300 worth of toys almost every day. It was usually Lego sets for the boys and countless dolls’ shoes for Isabella. Everything revolved around the delivery. The high point of the day was the UPS truck rolling up.
It was also a point of contention. Once, The Lady called from a shopping trip to New York City, and all Cameron could talk about was new Legos. “Did you order a delivery for us?” he asked. His mom was offended. “Is there anything you care about more than toys?” she yelled into the phone. “I’m going to cancel all deliveries to the house!” The kids immediately shut up. “Come on, guys. Blow your mom a kiss and say how much you love her,” I said, trying to save the call in a cheerful manner. But it was too late. The Lady had already hung up.
It was Cameron, a shy, sensitive boy, who seemed to suffer the most. He was having difficulties at his $20,000-a-year school and kept saying that his Lego figures were his “only friends.” But the worst incident happened during his $100-a-day summer camp in July 2014, when he and Isabella were picked up by bus.
He liked to be driven there in comfort by me or his mom. But his parents wanted him to be more social and comfortable around his peers. One day, we had to physically stuff him into the bus.
“I don’t want to go,” he yelled, writhing around to free himself from The Lady’s grasp.
“You are not doing this to me anymore,” she seethed. “Do you understand? You need a doctor! You’re crazy. You need to be normal like other kids. You’re sick!” She kept repeating the phrase, her tone full of contempt, as I looked on helplessly.
The Man had no tactics for dealing with Cameron, but he used his son’s behavior to attack The Lady, questioning her abilities as a mother. The arguments took my breath away. Once, when Cameron was holding on to his mom’s legs, begging her not to leave for the evening, she turned her dark, furious eyes on me. “Take him!” she ordered. “You’re a nanny, but clearly you don’t know what to do with him.”
The Man exploded with rage. “You’re his mom,” he said. “You don’t know what do with your own son!” As the accusation left his mouth, it seemed like he enjoyed every word.
After 10 months of working for this family — and repeatedly being threatened with termination by The Lady for perceived infractions — I knew I had to go. Why had I stuck it out for so long? In retrospect, I liked to challenge myself and wanted to leave on my own terms. I also treasured my time with the kids. They were angels. It was my mission to make them feel loved.
After the incident when The Man used me as currency against his wife, I didn’t want to be an instrument during their wars. I finally quit. The Lady forbade me from telling the children that I was leaving. So, one morning in January 2015, I just dropped them off at school, returned to pick up my suitcases and left.
Since then, I have been happily employed working for hardworking middle- and upper-middle-class people, who don’t have millions of dollars to throw around. They don’t have The Lady’s Hermès Birkin bags or The Man’s customized Rolls-Royce, but they are nice, polite, conscientious folk with content infants and toddlers.
The message I’ve learned through my experience is that every child needs and deserves love over money and any materialistic things. Love is indispensable.
*Names have been changed.