Another occurrence during my hiatus is that our family had an au pair, for half a year. It was supposed to be a full year but it, uh, did not go well. Nope.
Major, unforeseen personality failings on her part were the problem, plus those failings were a dead-on conflict with Burrito’s personality quirks. It did not. go. well.
I’ve known people who are thrilled with having an au pair. When it’s good, it’s wonderful. But when it’s bad, it’s a nightmare. Even when you fire her, often for days, or weeks she’s still stuck in your house. While you and your children hide in your bedroom all day, too paralyzed by the possibility of seeing her that you can’t go to your own kitchen so you just wait a few hours to eat until she leaves the house. See? Nightmare.
All of that caused me to step back from work and double down on parenting. You wouldn’t have found me volunteering in the classroom before the au pair, because I had work to do. After she left, I was in the classroom every week all semester, twice a week actually, because, you know, twins.
I also became a fierce mama bear… at one point, I thought she had physically injured Burrito. She in fact hadn’t physically abused anyone (only verbal abuse), but when I thought she had, I snapped into a mode I’ve never shown before. Fierce. I didn’t like that any of us had to go through that, but I like what I became.
It also reminded me that, as longtime readers will recall, I have remarkably bad judgment when it comes to hiring nannies (at least this time I didn’t have to call the police). Thankfully, especially after this experience, we’re now past the stage where we need nannies. In fact, we’re not far from being past babysitters.
It also reminded me that 18 to 23 year olds often don’t have the best judgment themselves. Au pairs are by definition young, but even when we sought nannies years ago, I’ve never wanted an older person. Older people do things the way they already know how; younger people can be molded to my (admittedly opinionated) way of doing things.
You know who’s older/mature and does things exactly the way I like? Me.
So despite my philosophical feminist beliefs that women with young children should be able to work as much as they want and should be facilitated in pursuing their career ambitions, I scaled back so that I can leave the office by 3 every day. I put my career in holding pattern mode rather than advancement mode. And unless I have an imminent deadline, I don’t work on the weekends or after school while they’re awake.
If I only had a kid like Tamale, it might be fine to still have nannies or au pairs or after school programs, because she likes everyone and everything. But Burrito doesn’t mesh well with, frankly, most other people.
When they were in preschool, the children made little holiday ornaments with their wishes. Instead of wishing for a baby sister or a light saber or a puppy like other kids, the wish that Burrito had his teacher write on his little ornament was, “I wish to spend more time with my mom.” It took me a few years, but now he gets his wish.
