PAN's Flea Bag

I have been working with kids on and off for the past 8 years or so. My first full-time job was a one-year Au Pair position in the US, then another Au Pair position in the UK, and after that it has been a few months at a time here and there, as well as one-time babysitting jobs. Being a nanny and working with kids are two of the things that I genuinley believe myself to be good at. I am fun, fair, relaxed, strict when I need to be, I have the patience for it and - well - kids tend to like me. I take a lot of pride in all of that.

I do apologize if this is starting to sound like a please-hire-me-as-your-new-nanny add, because it is not what it is. Being a nanny and working with kids is definitely not for everyone. It's a tough job. The responsibility that caring for somebody else's children comes with - can be overwhelming. I remember meeting the first family I worked with for the very first time. It was shortly after arriving to the US, and we had spoken on the phone, through email and with video calls previously. However, seeing those two little kids - 3 and 5 years old - was a moment I will never forget. They were so much smaller in size than I had imagined, and for a few seconds it seemed almost ridiculous that their parents would be willing to leave such tiny human beings in my care. They did, though, and everything worked out great.

 

We got to know each other over the next few months, became friends, and learned to trust one another. I walked them to school, holding hands with the younger boy and yelling at the older when he attempted to cross streets without looking both ways. I didn't mean to yell at him, but it was kind of an important thing, and with time - he learned! When we were on the playground, I watched them like a hawk. I let them do their thing, but I kept a close eye on them, from the bench where I was sitting. You hear so many things these days about what can happen to an unsupervised kid. If they got too far away, I either moved closer, or asked them to come back. Sometimes we played together all three of us, but most of the time the boys played with their friends, or even with each other. It seemed important at the time that they learned to use their own imagination, without me constantly having to come up with games for them to play. I enjoyed sitting there, watching them.

 

Here is the thing. When you sit on the same playground after school every day, five days a week, you start paying attention to the people around you. You learn to spot other caregivers, and they become easily distinguished from parents, even though I am unsure of why that is. A nanny knows another nanny when they see one, I suppose. This is when you become aware of how many different types of caregivers there are. There was one guy who spent the whole time running around with the kids he was caring for (don't know where he got the energy from, but he seemed awesome), the girl who never got off her phone, another girl who was constantly running after her charge and yelling at him for something (yikes!), the one who carried around a bag of everything-a-kid-could-possibly-need-and-more (snacks, Kleenex, a change of clothes, books, toys, more snacks...), an older woman who kept the kid she was looking after on her lap most of the time, the two friends that seemed more interested in gossiping than actually babysitting and... the list goes on. I am not sure exactly how the rest of them saw me..! I'm sure they had a description for me too. I was definitely not the one who ran around with the kids the most, or the one with the most snacks or hand-sanitizer, but I kept an eye on those kiddos and I never let them out of my sight. Whenever they came close to where I was - I made funny faces, smiled or pinched them playfully. Just to make sure they knew I watching them, and that I was having a good time too. I was that kind of a caregiver, I suppose, whatever that means.

 

Yes, there are hundreds of different types when it comes to caregivers, but there are also the really terrible kinds. The terrible nannies, babysitters and caregivers - they are the ones that bother me. Why? Well, one of the reasons is that they give the rest of us a bad name. Rule number one should (quite obviously) be; IF you don't like kids - don't take care of them. Choose a different profession. I can't tell you how many times I heard nannies and babysitters complain about their jobs, about how much they hated having to take care of kids, and how they were only doing it for the easy money. I get it... everybody needs money, but come on..! If you work at McDonald's and hate hamburgers, that's one thing, but don't sign up for taking care of children if you can't stand the sight of them, or if you are going to be grumpy and complain about it all the time. A hamburger won't notice if you hate your job, but a kid will. It doesn't seem right to me. The other terrible kind; is even worse. The indifferent caregiver, who is so caught up in their own life that they forget about the kid they are supposed to be looking after. I have an example for this one:

 

Last summer, or perhaps the one before that, I was at the park with the three kids I was babysitting. We were having a nice picnic under a tree, and the kids were discussing some computer game I had never heard of. I played a long. I'm pretty good at that; sounding as if I know what kids are talking about, when really, I have absolutely no idea. I consider that a skill. We were sitting there, when out of nowhere - a baby walked up to us! He was probably no older than one and a half or two at most. Couldn't speak, and could barely walk on his own. There was nobody else around, which is why his arrival surprised me. Where the heck did he come from? The boy sat down with us and started playing with a toy car, as I looked around for anyone who might be missing a child. After a few seconds, I spotted her. A woman, sitting about a football field away, talking on her phone. I could tell she was a caregiver, and not a parent, for several reasons. I watched as this woman continued her conversation, waited for her to look up and realize the boy was gone, but she just kept on talking. It hit me that I could have easily picked up this little boy, carried him to my car and driven off. She would have never known where he went. Luckily for her, and for the boy, I am a decent person who does not bring kids that don't belong to me home from the park. Unfortunately, that is not the case for all people out there, and especially not in a big city like Washington D.C. I was with a 5-year-old, and even she asked me how come nobody was looking after the baby boy.

 

I think it took somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes for this woman to realize that the boy was gone. Might not sound like a very long time, but it's a hell of a long time when we are talking about a baby, if you ask me. These kinds of incidents really make me sad (and mad). I genuinley love working with kids, and I have always loved being a nanny and a babysitter. To me, it's an incredible privilege and an honor to be trusted with somebody else's kids, and it is frustrating to see people who do not appreciate this, and who do not understand the importance of honoring that trust. There are some really great nannies, mannies and babysitters out there, and I believe that the right one can really make a great contribution to a family. It is always important to try and have a job that we love and appreciate, but I am of the opinion that it is even more important when it comes to working with kids. If it's not for you, if it does not interest you or if it does not make you happy - don't do it. Leave it to the ones that consider it to be the best job in the world.