In Which No Nannies Were Abused and Enslaved In My House

Oh, you funny anti-nanny opinion-havers on the internets, how you entertain me so!

You leave blog comments on otherwise thoughtful and nuanced blogs expressing your concern for all the poor helpless nannies who you just know are ALL being "abused" and "enslaved" in millions of American households. You have loads of research to prove it, too.

If our most recent nanny were still employed with us, and if I were foolish enough to believe you, I guess I'd have to fire her right now. But alas, she's already decided to move on to new opportunities: we were grateful she waited until our youngest entered preschool, and our foster kid returned to the birth parents. The truth is, we think the world of her and her family. We helped her find a new part-time job (that she admits she does not financially need because her husband's job has always covered their bills, and otherwise she'd be a SAHM with 3 kids in all-day school) and enroll in private advanced English conversations classes.  She speaks good enough English and even passed the citizenship test in English, but dreams of improving, for which we are paying her full tuition even though she no longer works for us.

*******

Yes, obviously, our system is certainly rigged against the working poor and I'm with Barbara Ehrenreich to the extent I wonder how anyone can support a family on, say, $7 an hour. However, the appropriate target for your ire should not be household employers like me, or @Laura Vanderkam, or @scantee over here, or even the mega rich like Sheryl Sandberg, or several of my grad school friends who live in large cities, who so very very clearly do not at all engage in unfair labor practices or tax dodging. Rather you should perhaps focus your ire on employers like Wal-Mart, who screw over the working poor en masse, reducing their workers' hours to avoid paying benefits, causing them and their families to become public charges. Or better yet, get mad at states that have low minimum wage laws.

In the last several years, I've employed 2 part-time US citizen nannies (not at the same time, though I don't necessarily see anything at all wrong/overly luxurious about having 2 concurrent nannies where a family has, say, a special needs kid, and/or 3 or more kids and/or multiples, etc). I went about employing each nanny the legal way: paying Social Security and Medicare taxes (against the first nanny's own objections I might add), reimbursing their transportation costs, giving paid vacations plus unlimited sick/personal days, providing them excellent job references after they each left us on their own terms, and supporting them to find future employment before they stopped working for us; and also letting their preschool-aged daughter be cared for along with my own kids in our home, and helping to pay for their daughter's Quincenera, and so on. 

All of the nannies I interviewed were making well above minimum wage (which was just over $9/hr in my state): I was told that the going rate in the Big City where I used to live was $500 a week, with a guarantee of 40 to 45 hours whether you actually needed that many hours or not, which works out to $10 to $12 an hour. Big City seemed to be cheaper than a lot of other cities. In one large southern US city, the going rate was closer to $15. What's more, nearly every nanny I interviewed stated, flat out, that they didn't do housework apart from cleaning up whatever messes they themselves actually make while performing their duties, and the ones with kids needed certain afternoons off for kids' appointments, they'd be gone 3 weeks at Christmas, and suddenly needed two months off to help their youngest transition into Kindergarten... and I gladly said "yes" and worked around their schedules because when I finally found someone truly awesome, I wanted her to stay. Our most recent nanny has great negotiation skills, and I love that about her even when she totally out-negotiates me.

So, I ask: Is what I've just described really "abuse" and "slavery"? Is this honestly so bad? Nannies work in a safe, clean environment for an employer who has the best possible incentive for treating them well: they're taking care of the boss's precious kids. I don't believe that a job caring for young children is inherently demeaning. If I believed that, I never would have been a SAHM like I was, and my DH never would have been a SAHD like he was. 

Yes, $10 or even $15 an hour, no benefits, is probably the bare minimum necessary to survive. But it's not a sweatshop, either, and it is definitely not "abuse," and dear sweet lord in heaven it is certainly not "slavery." And really, how offensive and inaccurate of you to say so.

I guess the real question is: is there a way for a progressive family in the professional classes to hire a nanny and *allow the wife to work* without automatically joining the ranks of so-called "exploitive" employers? (Because let's be honest, we're not talking about *husbands* not being able to work because they don't have access to available and adequate childcare!) And what else besides paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, and state unemployment taxes, should household employers be doing for their nannies?

No really, do tell.

Childcare: yep, we've done it pretty much every way there is

@Nicoleandmaggie had a good post recently on mother's helpers, where folks shared their various and sundry childcare arrangements. This topic always makes for fascinating reading for me - what is it about hearing how others do it that I find so interesting?

Here's my comment on how we've done the childcare thing - 

In the last 5 years, we’ve used nearly every child care arrangement under the sun: postpartum doula (aka baby nurse, or night nurse), daycare center in a large city, emergency back-up childcare paid for by my former employer, evening (high school/college age) sitters, daytime mother’s helpers, regular babysitter (aka nanny… where I’m from the term “nanny” is reserved for women who live in their employers’ homes and/or folks for whom “nanny” is their preferred job title), preschool, and full-day childcare swaps with another family.

In a perfect world (which by the way, I’ve never lived in), I would prefer postpartum doulas and mother’s helpers from birth to 6-months-ish, a nanny when the child is 6-9-months-ish to 2.5 years, then daycare/preschool from 2.5 years on. Actually, “in a perfect world” we’d live near family and they’d be super helpful, but I digress.

We’ve found Bright Horizons daycare centers in large cities to be excellent, but often oversubscribed for regular use – great if you can be flexible as to the days. Like someone else here said, BH was also my former company’s back-up childcare provider.

Now we live in a small town, and we appreciate the convenience of having the same loving, trusted, wonderful babysitter/nanny come to our home 3 days a week for the last 2+ years, sometimes with her daughter when she’s not in school. She taught the kids Spanish, keeps the house tidy, and is a great resource person to have in the event of an emergency, as we live 2 time zones away from our nearest family.

Re: how do I trust a nanny? See “Protecting the Gift” by Gavin de Becker. Intuition + references + hard-hitting interview questions + coming home early unannounced + time = trust. In our experience, the best nannies are women over 30 who have raised children of their own, and who want to be paid legitimately (and really, you’d be out of your mind not to follow the letter of the law on this issue).

As for evening sitters (for date night), we’ve generally found that childless women between the ages of 15 and 25 are a real mixed bag – not always the most reliable, punctual, detail-oriented sitters, to say the least. We have had a lot of flaky, “I forgot I had prom” crap, and people who don’t want to do things our way, etc. But ever since we’ve learned to give a lot of instructions, repeatedly, and write everything down for them – even the painfully obvious things (to us), and oh, this is a big one – pay them in cash so they don’t lose our check and require us to close our bank account and go through all the hassles that entails, and text and double text them to make sure they’re actually coming on time… yes, it’s a chore. At the moment, we have an awesome regular date night sitter (age 18) who has been with us for awhile, and we are paying her handsomely and worshipping the ground she walks on.

I suppose this is why I am incapable, not to mention, unwilling, to judge anyone else's childcare decisions. Nor will I ever be One True Way about it. That is all.

The Childcare Swap

My best parenting "hack" is the Childcare Swap. Why this idea hasn't caught on with people like me who don't live around (helpful) family and who don't have a money tree in their yard is a total mystery, because I think it is genius.

We used to have the common problem of not having enough uninterrupted couple time, plus not having enough time alone in our home without the kids. Turns out the Childcare Swap is the free solution to these problems. Love it!

Here's how it works. You find another family nearby, preferably with the same number of kids and with similarly-aged kids as your own. You agree to take care of all the kids at your house for a day, and they agree to take care all of the kids at their house some other day. Simple.

Here's how we arrange it. The family we Childcare Swap with has 2 kids; our boys are 10 months apart, and our girls are 3 weeks apart. Neither family has any helpful relatives nearby. We started doing this last year when our kids were 3.5 and 1.5. When we first proposed the idea, the other family jumped at it.

We watch all the kids at our house once a quarter, usually on a Sunday at the beginning of the quarter. Then, several weeks, later the other family reciprocates. Bizarrely, we've noticed that taking care of all 4 kids is so much easier than just taking care of our own 2 kids - because they are totally entertained by each other all day long. The kids absolutely love it and beg us to put more dates on our calendars.

Today is one of the happy days that the other family will watch our kids at their house, so DH and I are off to have a free, day-long date. Ta ta!

Try it, you'll like it!

In Which I Told - The Follow Up Post

I finally managed to get in touch with the parents of the 3-year-old who I found being left alone for half an hour on Friday morning at a local play gym.

It took all weekend, and all of yesterday, and many rounds of phone tag and messages, but I finally got one of the child's parents on the phone. Even though I know them personally, this took some doing. I had to actively push past my own desire not to keep picking up the phone, again, and again. But I'm glad I did.

I found the father to be completely unreachable, and the mother to be unreachable at first, and then a bit of a denier.

After I left a voice message saying "I need to speak with you because I witnessed your daughter in a dangerous situation on Friday" - in no uncertain terms on their landline, the mother finally sent me a text yesterday evening saying "It's hard to talk when I have all my kids, could you just text me about it or send me an email?" I called her back again and she picked up and I said "I wouldn't insist that we talk on the phone about it if it weren't serious - it will only take a minute."

Then I told her about the little girl being left alone for 30 minutes.

She said "My nanny would never leave her alone at the gym intentionally."

To which I said, "Be that as it may, that is what I witnessed, and I suggest you speak to so-and-so at the gym about it."

She said she would. She also mentioned that the kid was supposed to be in a class that morning, and wasn't sure what was going on. Ugh.

I wanted to tell her about the part where I heard the sitter say she's probably going to quit, but I felt there was a vibe of too much denial and probably shock for me to mention it.

I'm blogging about this to process it all, really. I'm just really shocked at how many walls these parents have up to prevent them from having any dialogue about their kids. I'm sure they don't see it that way though. Maybe it is unintentional.

Am I weird for thinking this whole thing just seems off?

A Phone Call I'm Not Looking Forward To

Yesterday, I witnessed a friend's babysitter, Ms. H, do something that crossed a major boundary for me.

Unfortunately, a little over a year ago, I'd heard the same sitter had (allegedly) behaved inappropriately in the exact same venue, and I even blogged about it. So now I feel I really do need to pick up the phone and say something to the parents. Here's what I saw that upset me yesterday.

I took my kids to the local indoor play gym. We were the first ones there that morning. Or so we thought. As we walked in, I was surprised to see my friend's 3-year-old daughter playing all alone in the huge gym, which is filled with gymnastics equipment such as rope swings, huge trampolines, parallel bars, pommel horses, and balance beams. As my mother would say: "innumerable, creative ways to fall and get paralyzed if not used properly" - or, more probably, to just have a ton of fun on.

Nobody was looking after the little 3-year-old in this huge place. At first I figured her babysitter was in the bathroom for a minute (still, kind of questionable judgment there - why not take the kid potty with you if there's no one there to ask to please watch her for a second). Then the little girl started climbing a storage unit in an area that's off limits to kids, so I went over to her and asked her to come with me, and I took all three kids to the front desk, and reported to the receptionist that this little girl here was just playing completely unsupervised and went into a dangerous, off-limits area - and where's her babysitter?

Receptionist calls a young female employee from the back, and she agrees to look after the little girl for awhile until someone shows up for the kid. I check the bathroom with my own kids, nope, no babysitter there.

A half an hour later, the babysitter finally shows up, holding a disposable cup of coffee. Wow.

I'm flabbergasted. There are drive thru coffee places every 10 feet in Podunkville. This is the Pacific Northwest. There are several coffee places with nice play areas for the kids to roam. Nobody ever needs to drop a kid off somewhere in order to get themselves a decent cup of coffee.

Half an hour later, loads more people have showed up, and the little girl falls off the uneven bars, landing flat on the ground. She has really hurt herself and starts crying, literally right at the feet of me and another friend. We look around and at that moment, and unlike the rest of the adults present, the sitter is on the other side of the room, sitting down, texting, having no idea what's going on with the little girl. She finally sees us consoling the little girl and comes over, grabs her hand and says "You're strong, stop crying." I wouldn't call it a harsh tone of voice, but I wouldn't call it one with much empathy either. The little girl seems fine the rest of the time.

As we're leaving, and the kids are all waiting their turn for their hand stamps, the sitter gets into a VERY LOUD conversation with the receptionist. She's a loud talker I guess. And I can't help but overhear it, which sucks, because she said some incredibly mean things about the child's parents, like "they chose to have 4 kids,"..."they've been relaxing in Hawaii all week"... "it wouldn't be so bad if the stupid dogs would stop barfing everywhere".. and "I'm probably going to quit soon, after the baby comes (the sitter is pregnant)."

Awkward. And sad.

Sad that she agreed to watch 4 kids and 2 dogs by herself for a week while in the first trimester of pregnancy - clearly, this experience went beyond her personal limits. So I can see why she wasn't in the best of moods that day. But still. Shitty judgment.

And now I have a phone call I have to make. I can't not say something after all of that. I'm thinking of writing myself a script for this phone call. What to say? What to leave out? I dunno.

DH thinks I should tell the parents only the parts about how I witnessed her leaving the kid unsupervised for half an hour while getting a coffee, plus the very public, very disloyal shit talking about the parents that I overheard.

Your thoughts?

Sitters Who Just Can't Handle Vegas

My DD turned 2 yesterday. Wow. I can't even begin to put into words how blissfully happy and how incredibly sad that makes me. She is our last child. Loads of "womb wistfulness" just like @caramama says. Amen.

We had a fantastic, fantastic, much-needed trip. We ate the shit out of the Big City. Saw my flaky, yet golden-hearted BFF and her new baby. Glad we could make that happen. I feel great about it. I also feel great about my marriage. Hard to believe we ever needed counseling (boy, did we though.)

Came home to an odd conversation from the woman who watches one or both of my kids a couple days a week so I can work. Apparently, her third daughter, who just started Kindergarten one month ago, is having a hard time 1) adjusting to leaving her house for school in the morning, and 2) eating lunch at school without her mother present. Let me clarify: her daughter loves her teacher, loves what she is learning in school once she actually gets there, but throws a tantrum and locks herself in the bathroom every morning that her mother is not there to personally escort her to school. Neither her aunt nor her 2 older sisters have been able to reach her. And she is apparently losing weight due to not eating at school unless her mother is there. The actual food quality is not the issue, it is just that she won't eat it unless her mother is there. Can you say 'Holy Manipulation, Batman!?' And she's been to the doctor with a lot of what I think is 100% psychosomatic stuff going on this month. I get it: this is a little, 5.5-year-old kid who Just Can't Be Without Her Mother. And a mother with Good Intentions But Very Poor Boundaries.

What I don't get is our sitter's chosen response to the behavior. Instead of finding some way to deal with the child's behavior, and actually work with her on it, she thinks she needs to acquiesce and just quit working so that she can be present at her daughter's school every day at drop off and lunch. WTF? This is the thought that apparently entered her mind when she told me about it: "Hmm, I'll ask my employer to give me 2 weeks off, and then I'll finally decide if I'm going to come back or not."

Um, it doesn't usually work that way.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a place with any decent daycare, nor with any sort of nanny placement agency. Sitters are all found via word of mouth, which actually works quite well in a small town with a strong rumor mill, but the lead time is very long. Ugh. Wish us luck, please. Because there is no work/life balance happening at my house right now!

I know what you're thinking. "Fire her! This is some unprofessional shizz on top of some other unprofessional shizz!" But seriously? I simply can't right now. There is no one else to replace her. Work-wise I'm so screwed if she leaves now. So I need her to hang in there for just a few more weeks. I need good help - a known quantity who I can trust both with my kids and my valuables. You'd be shocked at how hard that is to come by in Podunkville. We've tried. Say what I will about her choices vis-a-vis her Kindergartner, and her predilection for Too Much Honesty with me, her hapless employer; I know my kids are thriving in her care, and we're better off with her in our lives at this time.

The logistics of life really, really suck sometimes.

I just need someone who will show up for just 11 more months! Then DD can go to the Montessori preschool, and I can BREATHE.

Am I the only one out there with sitters who just can't handle Vegas?

P.S. Bonus points if anyone knows that movie reference.

Three-Year-Old Making Babysitter Cry

Even though I have a shitload of work-related things going on right now, I need to take a break from it to blog about the following situation I'm finding myself in. I just got back from a lunch meeting where I was asked to start taking on a new business opportunity that I'm really excited/scared-in-a-good-way about. Of course it will require me to make sure I have adequately backed-up childcare, because unlike some of my other work, I can't rely upon being able to do most of it from home. I'm also pretty sure our regular babysitter is at the end of her rope when it comes to our charming 3.5-year-old DS.

Isn't that how life works? You get a great professional opportunity, and the very same day your babysitter tells you how unhappy some little one is all of the sudden making her. "I was crying in bed last night and my husband asked me what was wrong...." Noooooo!!!

Sitter approached me just a few minutes ago with tears in her eyes telling me she believes that DS really does not like her at all. The last 3 times she's watched him he has been a holy terror towards her because he misses his mama. I've had to leave my house with DS kicking and screaming. (Side note: I'm guessing at least a part of this is a developmentally-normal 3.5 year-old thing, because a lot of friends with same-aged kids have reported the same fits of Erratic, Sudden-Onset Clinginess). We've been down this road before with Sitter whenever DS has been in one of his phases. Talking through it with him has sometimes helped. Today she insinuated that she thinks DS would be happier without her - I had to ask if she was quitting. She said "No way." Whew.

DH feels that Sitter needs to develop a thicker skin and stop taking a 3-year-old's pissed-off protestations that he "hates you" because his mama just left for work as Gospel truth. I tend to agree. Sitter takes what DS says to her very, very personally. On the one hand she says she understands it, "He's only 3, I know that's how 3-year-olds are, but the way he talks it is like talking to a grown-up. He's just different than all of my 3 daughters and DD." Yeah, he's one special snowflake alright.

I asked her "so what do you want me and DH to do about it" - three times.

"I don't know."

"Do you want us to keep talking to him and letting him know what our expectations are?"

"Yes."

"What else do you think would help?"

"I really don't know."

"Does he need more discipline?'

"No, I just think he hates me, and I'm sad..."

Ugh....

Keeping My Mouth Shut

I kind of wish I was more of a talker sometimes. But the truth is I'm an introvert who sometimes manages to seem like an extrovert for awhile, but after a time my learned traits like carrying on a lot of small talk, and calling up someone to go see a movie or go to the mall with me go by the wayside, as I realize they are just not natural to my personality. The world seems to love extroverts - I'm learning to accept it, and to keep working to find my truest voice in social situations.

That being said, I am really good at keeping secrets - the good kind of secrets, anyway. When something is an obvious "need to tell" type of thing, I almost always find the courage to talk. Well, until this week anyway.

Something came to my attention recently regarding the "nanny" (Ms. H) of a local acquaintance of mine (Ms. S). (Note: to me, a real "nanny" is someone who actually lives on your property and works at least 40 hours/week. Anyone else is a "babysitter" or "day care provider/teacher." IRL, I would never, ever try to correct anyone on that point because, first of all, I'm not even sure my definition of "nanny" is technically correct. I just think the mis-use of the word "nanny" **in certain contexts** can sometimes make people seem overly pretentious and self-important. Not always, but sometimes, and in certain situations. I just think "babysitter" is so much more palatable, IMHO.)

So anyway back to my story. Another babysitter (Ms. D), who works for a local friend of mine (Ms. B) witnessed Ms. S's babysitter, Ms. H (an early-20-something with no kids of her own), treating one of Ms. S's four daughters inappropriately at a local indoor play gym. Ms. B told me that Ms. D told her that she saw Ms. H yelling across the gym at Ms. S's 6-year-old daughter, and refused to get up off her ass and actually go talk to the child about whatever she was doing that Ms. H felt she needed to scream about. So the little girl was running wild, Ms. H was yelling publicly, and Ms. D didn't like it one bit, but she also didn't say anything to Ms. H nor to the management of the play gym. (Sorry for all of these Ms.-so-and-so's, I hope this is not too hard to keep straight). Ms. B asked me what I thought she should do...

BTW, Ms. B and Ms. S are colleagues who do not know each other well; and Ms. D is in her 50's with 3 grown kids, and used to run a daycare that Ms. S's girls used to attend, before she sold the place and took up part-time babysitting.

I told Ms. B that I thought Ms. D should have addressed it directly with Ms. H or someone in authority, either at the time it happened, or immediately thereafter, if she really thought what she saw was so "inappropriate." I also said that I have seen Ms. H behaving very lovingly at this same gym towards two of Ms. S's other daughters, and I know Ms. S thinks the world of Ms. H and has taken her on several family vacations. Also, several of Ms. S's neighbors who are stay-at-home moms regularly play with the kids with Ms. H, and I have to imagine would report back to Ms. S if something were amiss.

Ms. B mentioned that this is a hard topic for her because when she used to live somewhere else, someone once reported to her that they saw her babysitter behaving inappropriately, and so she immediately fired her - but had nagging doubts about it. I agree that the "reasonable parent" when confronted with a report like that would probably have to let the sitter go immediately. I know I would - but part of the reason would honestly be not wanting to look like a crappy parent in the eyes of the person who reported the behavior to me! But on the other hand, no one can prove a negative. It would be like Ms. S saying to Ms. H, "prove to me that you did not scream at my kid in public."

I left Ms. B by saying she could call up Ms. S and let her know what Ms. D saw, and say something like "maybe you should talk to Ms. H about how you expect her to discipline the kids." I don't know though. My read on Ms. S is that she doesn't want her boat rocked and probably wouldn't fire Ms. H over this. I hate situations like this!! I feel like the so-called "right" thing to do here is eluding me. What say you, parenting goddesses?