Specialising in sleep therapy, 'supernanny' Nuala Reddy claims to have a 100 per cent success rate in sorting out sleep problems, writes Sheila Wayman
SOMETIMES SHE she sees "pure hatred" in her clients' eyes. At moments of angst, parents who have hired 'supernanny' Nuala Reddy can find her advice hard to take.
Specialising in sleep therapy, she goes into homes where couples are at the end of their tether because a child has trouble going to sleep and is waking through the night.
"The child is never the problem," she says simply. "Children are only doing what they're let do."
She does warn parents who contact her that it will be tough. They are paying her to tell them what they are doing wrong with their child. Who wants to hear that? But if you're suffering severe sleep deprivation, you will try anything to get a good night's sleep.
Reddy (41) has no formal qualifications and no children of her own. What she does have is 20 years' experience of childcare, with another 10 years of babysitting her own extended family before that. And she boasts of a 100 per cent success rate in sorting sleep problems, in children ranging in age from four months to 11 years.
She must be pretty confident to be so definite. "I am obnoxiously confident," she laughs.
Voted one of the top 10 maternity nurses in Britain by Harpers and Queen magazine some years ago, alongside the revered and reviled childcare guru Gina Ford, she is now back working in her native Dublin. While she would share Ford's belief in the use of "controlled crying", any similarity of approach ends there. "Her method is very rigid; my method is a family method. I look at the whole big picture."
Reddy fell into childcare by accident. At 21 she was living and working at home, making jewellery and clothes to sell, when her mother, Evelyn, saw a newspaper ad for a London agency. "She asked me: 'How do you fancy being a nanny in London?'"
Within 10 days, she was in her first nanny job in London.
She was plunged into the world of the rich and sometimes famous. Her work as a nanny, and later as a maternity nurse helping mothers with their new-born babies, has brought her to homes in Belgium, Berlin, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Antigua, Mauritius. It was a chance to sample how the other half live.
"I am from Walkinstown and here I was sitting on a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean." Celebrity clients, who she can talk about, include former Blue Peter presenter Caron Keating, daughter of Northern Irish TV presenter Gloria Hunniford. She worked for her in 1997, as maternity nurse to Keating's second child, Gabriel.
"I stayed with her four and a half months. She was an absolute joy," Reddy says of Keating, who died of breast cancer seven years later at the age of 41. "You would not meet anyone more down to earth."
She found Hunniford to be a real motherly figure too. "The family were rock solid."
Other well-known names who employed Reddy include Emma Forbes, former presenter of the ITV children's show Live and Kicking, and former racing driver Paul Stewart. "When he told me he was Jackie Stewart's son, I said 'Who's she?' I was very ignorant."
It's easy to see how she endears herself to families. She radiates warmth and a sense of humour through her ready smile and clear, light blue eyes. Her long red hair, lightly freckled face and gift of the gab reinforce the Irishness of her appeal.
Meeting her in a coffee shop in Blackrock, Dublin, at 11 o'clock in the morning, she looks remarkably fresh for somebody who spends half her nights sitting up listening for crying children. Smartly dressed in a sleeveless black dress under a green shrug cardigan, with a double string of pearls around her neck, she appears friendly and efficient rather than ferocious.
One of six girls in a family of eight children, the sisterly approach she takes to clients comes naturally. Describing herself as "fairly patient", she says she occasionally talks to parents like children, "but in a fun way", threatening to put them on the "naughty step" if they don't do what she tells them.
"You do feel a bit like a school teacher sometimes but I have only had to become stroppy with one dad. He wasn't playing ball and at one stage turned around to me and said 'I've had a long day's work'."
Reddy pointed out firmly that he may have had a hard day, but his wife had been coping with the baby all day. "I asked him, 'Which would you prefer? I am sure she would prefer your job. You can't take two hours of this, so you're hardly the man to do it 24 hours a day."
So what, exactly, does her sleep therapy entail? "Every job is different, every child is different. There is no set formula and I can't translate what I do to anybody but I seem to be able to analyse each child. I have not had a failure yet."
Each booking is for three nights in a row, at €30 an hour. But things are usually going so well by the second night, she suggests the parents go it alone the third night and save themselves the expense of having her there.
The moment she arrives at 6pm on the first day, "I jump straight in." She is assessing the parents, the child and what's going on before bedtime. Her aim is to help them establish a good routine.
"If you teach the parents a night-time routine, you will have a happy family."
Work schedules permitting, she tries to get the parents to sit down and have a meal with the child, even if they are just eating a piece of toast. "A lot of the times it would be their first child they are having the problems with and the child is left sitting at the table on his own. I wouldn't leave a child sitting at a table on his own."
About 6.30pm it's bath time, and she shows parents how to make that a "fun time". Standing in the shadows, Reddy is coaching the parents, not engaging with the child herself.
Then it's story time: "Grab a child's imagination, something nice and calm. I love poetry." She believes in reading something soothing again and again.
"They get a certain amount of story time, on the sofa or up in the bedroom but not in the bed. Then it's into bed: "Mummy's here, daddy's here, we both love you. Good night." Reddy takes the parents downstairs.
"My job then is to keep the parents sane while the child kicks up. We leave it for 10 minutes and then we go back up. Sometimes I have to stand at the door with my arms folded and say 'you're not going in until the 10 minutes are up'."
She gives the parent 20 seconds or less to go in and reassure the child, lie him back down and say a firm goodnight.
It generally takes two such visits. "The majority of children will be asleep within 20 or 25 minutes," says Reddy.
However, after a "power nap" they are likely to wake again by 11pm, ready to do battle. "This is when we have up to two hours' screaming. The child is thinking, 'hey, I cry, I get picked up, I get brought downstairs or into their bed. Mummy and daddy, don't you know the drill?' "
Reddy sometimes finds it difficult watching the angst parents go through at this stage, when it can become quite fraught. They want to go to their crying child immediately but she won't let them. She observes, analyses and talks the parents through what they should and shouldn't do, timing their visits to the child's bedroom.
The first night is always the toughest. The second night there may be residual protests by the child, but as long as the parents stick to their new routine, they won't last long. By the third night, apparently, it's sorted.
There is a huge demand for sleep therapists, says Reddy, yet looking for help with parenting can still be taboo. Some people "would never want to admit getting me. They don't want to admit they have paid for something that everybody else seems to be able to do."
Some clients have asked her to pretend to be a friend if anybody calls to the house while she's there.
"A lot of women feel failures that their baby is not sleeping through. Getting me in is a huge leap in admitting it to themselves, as well as to anybody else."
People who call on her services have made easy mistakes, she says, and slipped into a bad routine. They need someone like her, who can stay at arm's length emotionally, to put them back on the right track.
"Children are so manipulative. I guarantee if I had a child tomorrow I would make just as many mistakes," Reddy adds, "because it would be my child, my hormones, my guilt trip."
• Nuala Reddy can be contacted through Executive Nannies, tel 01-8731273