Octomom Nadya Suleman’s nanny trouble

Trading blame in a conflict between Suleman and the free helpers sent to care for her octuplets

Nadya “Octomom” Suleman fired her free nannies, said Vicki Hyman in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. Suleman told TV therapist Dr. Phil McGraw—who arranged to have the non-profit Angels in Waiting service care for Suleman’s kids—that she let the nannies go because she thought they were “just waiting for me to make a mistake.” And according to the nannies, she did.

The Angels in Waiting wasted no time filing complaints with California’s Child Protective Services, said Elizabeth Snead in the Los Angeles Times. Three complaints, to be precise, about security problems in the home where Suleman plans to raise her octuplets and her other kids. But Suleman says it was the nannies who were the problem, “accusing them of unprofessional and unethical behavior, of frightening her about child abduction, setting her up to fail and not empowering her.”

“Clearly there was some ongoing tension,” said Jennifer Wolf in About.com. But the dispute doesn’t reflect well on Suleman, even though she is replacing the fired caregivers with a new team. “The bottom line is that unless the children were somehow in danger (which I doubt), Child Protective Services will expect her to have been able to put those issues aside for the sake of her kids.”

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