Maternity 33

week 23: babysitters…

I am currently looking for someone to help with our children during the day. I’m not new to this, as I have been working with babysitters and nannies for over three years, and I feel that I have learned some essential lessons that may benefit first time parents.

First, I find that you have to train your nanny, no matter how much experience she has. This may be obvious to some of you, but you may also wonder what “training” really means? To me, it mostly means having your nanny shadow you for a week or so, and making sure she picks up on the routines and on the basics. I had a funny little “operations manual” which I used for both babysitters and friends/parents who wanted to watch our son. I found that it reassured them – though I also found that the best babysitters are those who can deal with the events that aren’t laid out in the manual!

 Second, you must find someone who can care for your children and look out for you. This means they have to empty the dishwasher when it is full, take out the trash on their way out, wash clothes when they are soiled, empty strollers, re-stock diaper bags, keep baby rooms and closets tidy etc.. This happens to be the stuff you do while you are caring for your children, and you should expect this from anyone who watches your child in your home. If they don’t do it, you will become exhausted and resentful.

Third, you don’t need to hire someone for life and actually it may be better to work with people who only have a year or two to give to your family. There’s better energy when you work with someone who is nannying temporarily, while they study, intern, or work on becoming an actor. They have passion and vision for their life and bring this to your home.

I was a little clueless when my son was born, yet, you don’t have to be as lost as I was.

A dear friend of mine, a philosopher by training, spent considerably more time thinking about whom she wanted to hire to watch her daughter as she finished her dissertation. Aloisia’s daughter was born in June 2008, when she had not quite finished her Ph.D. thesis. She started to go back to the library to revise chapters when baby was about three months old. In the beginning she left for three hours every day, which eventually increased to six hours by the time baby was six months old. Hiring a babysitter to do this was a tough decision for Aloisia and her husband to make since she did not have any income to pay for the babysitter. And, since nannies prefer to be hired full time or at least for full days she had to come up with her own nanny-search and training.

Maternity 33: what does “nanny training” mean to you?

Aloisia: Within weeks of my daughter’s birth, I realized that being a mother was something I knew how to do. The reason I was so self-confident was that – other than with pregnancy help books, which I found awful – I had picked up the idea of the “good enough mother” from the pediatrician and child psychologist Winnicot. The idea is that every mother is good enough for her child. Also a highschool friend from Austria had told me early on about Magda Gerber and Emmi Pickler’s approach. Magda Gerber was a child psychologist from Hungary who started what is today called the RIE Method: see their website, they publish a manual and a newsletter, and offer videotapes and training for parents and professionals.. Her approach to infant and child rearing is simple: you do not need to provide stimulation or engage your child, but let them develop on their own, while your job is to watch for enjoyment and to make sure the child does not hurt themselves. Equipped with these two approaches I had no problem “training” my own babysitters. The main idea that I tried to communicate to them was that infants (and children) should not be treated like objects, in the sense of being merely handled, but they be should spoken to as if they could understand, even if one does not think it likely or possible. For instance, instead of just diapering her, I asked them to tell her what they are about to do: lifting her up - taking off her onesie and so on… Furthermore, any activity that she could do herself, the caretaker should not do for them, e.g. propping up to sit, or walking by holding both hands. Anything she could not do yet, she should not do yet.

Maternity 33 peanut gallery comment: I read Gerber’s work when I was pregnant with my second child and I wish an RIE daycare center existed in San Francisco. I would send her there in a heart beat. Look it up to see if it exists in your neighborhood.

Maternity 33: how did that work out?

Aloisia: Interestingly each babysitter I trained showed different responses to this and I soon realized that as much as I may be in charge of the training, each person would bring their own background with them to it. The first babysitter we hired was a Japanese woman in her thirties who was writing a children’s book in the morning and took care of our daughter in the afternoon. She had not ”worked” with newborns before. The Japanese woman sang to our daughter in Japanese but I do not think she could bring herself to talk to her in anything else but baby language.

 The next caretaker we hired after the Japanese woman, had been working as an au pair for a French family in Paris. She was very good with Francine – but very unhappy with her life and so she soon left. Unfortunately this is not uncommon when hiring care takers part time. We were lucky when we found a college student, K., who stayed with us almost a year. K. had a real problem with being late, and so in her case I talked to her a lot about why she was making herself late.

When K. left to pick up her post college career we hired a woman, C., who had been babysitting Francine in the evenings. During my training with her she said to me one day “you are so good at making things easier for Francine with words - I really try to learn to do that but it is hard for me.” She told me that as a kid she spent most of her time with her grandmother, who only spoke Spanish. Her grandmother therefore never spoke to her – and so she never learned Spanish. This suffering from an excessively non-verbal upbringing made me realize how much impact a person’s history has on the way they can give care. I really liked C., because she was aware of what was going on and effectively overcame her own upbringing and learned to speak in her role as a caregiver.

Maternity 33 peanut gallery comment: I have actually never talked to our baby sitters about how they speak to our children. I was so impressed when Aloisia told me what she did and I will include this in our next nanny training. However, Aloisia is right in pointing out that there is only so much one can “change” one’s way of interacting with babies. And perhaps this is for the best: I hope that children who interact with many adults with different “styles” become more adaptable adults.

Maternity 33: What’s your advice for parents who are about to hire their first caretaker?

Aloisia: As I am writing this, I find myself training yet another caretaker. (Due to our need to reduce our childcare to 20 hours a week because I am not teaching in the summer, we did not have enough hours for C. to make a living.) Our new caregiver is a college student again. We like H., though we know that this is an evolving relationship. What we have learned is to accept that certain memories and traumas exist in each of us, parents and caregivers alike – but to not feel responsible for them and to know that we can’t change them. What we can do is listen and give feedback. To learn to say exactly what we expect and to accept that there may be misunderstandings. A good relationship between caretaker and parent is one in which the issues are known and understood and thus do not stand in the way. Sometimes the relationship is not good and there is nothing that can be done about it. This is also an important lesson.