It is a fascinating experiment to be initiated into some form of motherhood by parenting other people’s children. I had that experience as a housemom in a group home full of exuberant boys. Our guest post today is written by a woman who has experienced it by becoming a professional nanny. I have a lot of respect for the parenting opinions of those who professionally parent, but aren’t actually parents. They have a lot of wisdom without all the guilt and bias being the actual parent brings. I find there’s a clarity gained by intimately observing and interacting with other parents and their parenting styles before you’re the parent yourself, which is why I asked this nanny if she’d share her top three observations with us. So, here’s a little perspective from the point of view of the woman who watches your kids. You’re gonna like it.
*Because what she is writing is so tied up with her job, I’m withholding her name. And also because sometimes being mysterious is fun.
In many ways, I feel like my life resembles the movie Groundhog Day. I work as a nanny, and I have lived through the baby stage, toddler stage, and elementary-aged kid stage many times, only to repeat it all over again. I’ve worked with a few families with teenagers, though I am glad that is behind me because the laundry of teenage boys is not for the faint of heart. Or those without bleach. But babies poop all over their clothes and mine, so perhaps it evens out. My life during the day is very much like that of a stay-at-home mom right down to the children crying in turn, piles of laundry, continual need to prepare nutritious food made with ancient grains and garden produce for tiny people while I eat a PB&J over the sink an hour later, fights over weather-appropriate outfits before school, and grocery lists. However, I myself am a single adult, so I arrive home at the end of a long day with yet another dinner to prepare, my own home to clean and laundry to do, a roommate to not ignore, and events on the calendar to ensure I actually see other people from time to time. My professional life is the personal life of working parents, so I am often a sounding board on their struggle to balance the job they love with the family they love. While I often wish I more squarely belonged in one category or another rather than straddling several, I’m grateful for the unique perspectives it has afforded me. Now many years in and several jobs down, I’m on the verge of awarding points for truly creative excuses to get out of homework, and have a deep, burning hatred for Dr. Brown’s baby bottles.
You Know More Than You Think You Do. Also, Babies Be Trippin’.
One nanny job I had came with privacy restrictions. I couldn’t post or say much (or anything) about it on social media for legal reasons. Double that with the fact that I had been hired due to my specific skill set, had to regularly stand up in front of a judge, and I felt the pressure to KNOW ALL THE THINGS. I knew I could do the job, but could I always do it well? Sometimes “well” means “survival til the end of the day.” It felt very isolating at times, but time and again I had to trust my gut instinct and that was surprisingly confidence-building. You know what can diminish confidence? Polling the audience. I have often relied on the wise advice of friends, but putting a question out there to hundreds of people on the internet more often than not results in just as many opinions. Opinions that conflict with each other and some don’t even sound right to you but they must have worked so maybe I should try them … and then you end up even more confused and unsure of yourself than when you began. You learn by doing. You know more than you think you do.
Perhaps it’s because they have yet to communicate in any decipherable language beyond “cry of the Nazgûl” but babies can be hard. They’re also incredibly easy. All they need is a place to sleep, food, snuggles, and a clean diaper, right? WRONG. They may only sleep in a swing set to the highest level with carefully calibrated jungle noises. They may pee through every industrial-strength and size diaper you can buy, and always at night, waking themselves (and you) up. They may scream because eating creates acid that rises up their throat so they vomit, but they’re hungry, and you never knew a baby could scream nonstop from 11am-6pm. Babies are crazy. Why do you think we put strait-jackets masquerading as swaddle sacks on them? When it comes to babies, the days are long, but the months are short. One way or the other, you will find your way through, if only because of sheer survival. One day you will wake up and your two-week-old, expressionless glowworm will be a giggling seven-month-old who can sit and actually grab things! They can point (or grunt) at things they want! You can communicate! And then five years later you’ll be dragging them to the school entrance while they wail about how their socks are just WRONG BUT I DON’T KNOW WHYYYY and you’ll deem communication to be overrated.
Stop Overscheduling Your Kids
There is a VAST array of activities for kids these days. Kickboxing! Pottery! Synchronized swimming! Soccer for two year olds! (otherwise known as herding cats?) Babies can even get on the action with swim classes, Gymboree, and Kindermusik. Plenty of these are fun, teach kids about discipline, teamwork, learning new skills and working towards a goal (sometimes literally). But I continually get the impression that we believe kids must have the opportunity to try all of these things in order to find out which one they like. When you have a seven-year-old falling asleep in the backseat post-meltdown on the way to basketball because they’re tired from school and got to bed late the night before because of dance class … it’s time to reassess. Chances are you aren’t gleefully bopping along to Stevie Wonder in the front seat, yourself. Everyone has hectic days (I developed a lifelong love for a likely MSG-laden cheese burrito from all the Wednesday nights of my childhood spent going from piano lessons, to the sketchy Mexican drive-thru, to AWANA), but in many cases, you have the power to choose. Are you a horrible parent because you loved playing volleyball and want your kid to (hopefully) have the same exhilarating experience? No. Are you depriving your child because you’re not enrolling them in anything because the thought of ferrying children all over town gives you a twitch? Nope. College intramurals can be a wonderful opportunity to be on the soccer team your miserly parents never wanted to pay for, while you play with equally skilled (or unskilled) peers and try not to fall in front of the cute girls sitting on the sidelines.
Nobody Has a Monopoly on “Busy”
“Why am I expected to bring cupcakes? I’ve got so much to do already—she’s a stay-at-home-mom, she has the time to do that and more besides. So are all the other moms on the sign-up sheet, which is why they probably came up with the brilliant idea of snacks after practice. They have the time.”
“Do the parents you work for spend ANY time with their kids? Or do you just do everything for them? I could never give up time with my precious little ones.”
“How did you even have time to do that? Oh well, you’re not actually a mom. Since you’re single, so you probably have tons of time to do whatever you want, right?”
I have been a part of each of those discussions many times and they all make me want to put a fork in my eyeball. Your eyeball too, if you’re the one saying them. And if I’m in the right, slightly aggravated mood, then, YES. That woman really does sometimes seem like the stereotypical SAHM mom, getting pedicures and long lunches in between shopping trips. YES, it does sometimes feel like I’m doing the heavy-lifting of caring for the kids and the parents get to swoop with fun treats and trips to the zoo while I battle it out over picky eaters. YES, I get to wander around Anthropologie picking up all the breakable dishes I want, and I slept in on Saturday until 8am, after falling into bed at 9pm after another week of being exhausted by kids. It was GLORIOUS.
We are all busy people. We all have times in life when you’re totally overwhelmed and more keeps coming, and other times when you can take a breath and sit down for a bit. But you don’t get to quantify that for other people. I’m grateful for the working moms who are helping support their family (or are doing it all on their own) or are working purely because they love what they do and are a great example to their kids and others of some of the many different things you can do in life. I love my stay-at-home mom friends who share my love for spending my days with kids, even when they grind cheese into the carpet. I’m grateful for the opportunity to join with parents in helping to raise their kids. With any luck, I’ll have all the kinks worked out by the time I have my own, and will obviously produce perfect, magical, unicorn children.
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