All The Young Dudes

I'm a childcare worker.

A nanny to be precise.

I know it's risky business to talk about such things on a blog but I'm pretty certain that there are hundreds, thousands of us out there in blogger world and I don't intend to "out" my family by disclosing personal details. Since it's such a big part of my life though it's impossible to keep it out of my blog.

With that said, on with the show!

I recently started with this family that employs my services for a couple days per week. Not much, but enough. Especially since we've hit a snag. Every nanny knows the one I'm speaking of, it's that time when you cease to be the cool new person that they get to play with and become this nagging annoying bitch who consistently makes them say please and thank-you, pick up their toys, won't give them all the candy they want and makes them practice writing their numbers & letters.

I only have the one 5 year old boy for most of the day (brother comes after school lets out) and for the first couple of weeks it was going smashingly. Until yesterday. Somehow I went from this fun awesome chick- the first one he had ever met who knew the names of the Transformers and had read Spiderman comics to someone he was mean to and refused to listen to. I thought maybe we were just having bad day yesterday so I tried to brush it off as a bad day and his older brother's influence. But this morning as I arrived to work I tried to have a talk with him over breakfast regarding his previous days actions. I asked him if he really didn't like having me around and if he didn't think we were friends. He said no. He doesn't want to be my friend and he doesn't like me. I named off some of the cool stuff we've done since I started coming over and asked him if he liked doing that stuff, he shrugged his shoulders and I'm thinking to myself that I would have loved to have had someone do all those things with me when I was a kid!

Then it dawned on me, those things don't seem all that special to him because he gets to do them all the time. No leverage there. So I told him that he had hurt my feelings and asked him if he knew what that felt like. He said that yes he did. So now we're trying something new. I'm not in any way being mean to him, just not as accommodating as before. There's no small talk, no lists of fun stuff that we can do with the day, I've just been letting him amuse himself this morning and see what he thinks of that. He knows he's made me upset and it's bugging him but he just won't come around- he's got that toddler stubbornness. I just want him to understand that it feels the same way to someone else when you hurt their feelings as it does when someone hurts his. Empathy is not always an inherent understanding in kids and it's dangerous when it doesn't exist and they grow up without it.

People, do your kids a favor and don't make the only discipline your kid gets be through school and daycare/nannies.

KIDS NEED DISCIPLINE.

I can't stress this enough. It seems simple, but it also seems as though everyone has lost their damn minds with the way they 'raise' their children. They are not pets. They require more than food, shelter, clothes and moments of intimacy. All the money in the world, all of the expensive activities, the college fund you've been paying into their whole lives, the cool expensive clothes & toys you buy them will never make up for the fact that you are gone working all the time and virtual strangers are raising them.

People wonder why there are so many kids shooting people these days? I'm not going to go so far as to point fingers but hey- might want to consider it. I happen to love my job and love kids and would NEVER do anything to harm them but unfortunately not every childcare worker feels the same way I do. Never mind the worst case scenario of them actually abusing the children most of them are just entirely not interested in the kids, they largely ignore them and are rude to them. Sigh, it is a shame when materialism and the lust for bigger better and more competes with a parent's sacred charge to raise their children. I know I'm talking myself out of a job by saying parent's should just stay home to raise their kids but mostly above all I care about the kids and I've seen so many of them grow up confused, spoiled, unhappy, unruly. It's impossible to not love them, I just wish I could be real with parent's about what their kids are going through without pissing them off and losing my job. It's a no win situation.

Now, this in no way is a reflection on those (few) parents who have to work to pay their bills period. No extras, they are just struggling and need childcare to help out- different case altogether.

OK, I feel better having gotten that off of my chest. Whew!