- New York City
- Children
- $25/hour
Instructions
The rattle. The click. The turn.
These are the sounds of intense relief or absolute fear. Sometimes both.
These are the sounds of surrender in war.
These are the sounds that straighten your spine and spines of those around you.
These are the sounds of parents entering the battlegrounds that are their homes.
Nothing is quite like the sound of keys outside a closed New York City apartment door, especially when you've been on the opposite side of that door trying to get two kids to eat their dinner, do their homework, and bathe, all without killing each other, for the past two hours. No matter what has happened or what that parent is walking into when they cross that ever important battle line into their own home, you are happy to see them. Rather, you're happy to be leaving.
Don't get me wrong-- I love kids. I love babysitting. I choose to do this job because it pays well, it can be flexible, and I sincerely enjoy hanging out with kids. That doesn't mean it's always pleasant. It can be stressful. Frustrating. Like, gee, I don't know-- a job.
Nannies are employees. Employees of a grander, more powerful company than any investment banking or marketing firm. No, nannies are employed by the mothers and fathers who run those multi-million dollar companies, or at least work in a high level at them. How do you think they got so successful at making lots of money? Discipline. No messing around. High standards. Translate that into child rearing and you have quite the household. Busy parents can mean busy babysitters; it's good, we like to have jobs and be paid. However, babysitting in New York is not your grandma's movie night or ordering pizza. It's "screen time", Nick's authentic Italian wood-oven pizza and pasta, ice cream dates at Ciao Bella, money for a taxi to Central Park. It's a lifestyle.
So, carrying around a large, basically diaper bag full of juice boxes, granola bars, Wet Wipes, a first aid kit, and coloring materials doesn't seem too much for you? OK, let's add in another kid, and let's put them 20 blocks apart for after-school pickup. Oh, and don't forget that Wednesdays are dance class but only every other Wednesday, and this week we switched the weekly religion class to Thursday at 3:05 pm, which means that you need to leave school, well, ideally before school ends. And you should know that the only palatable food for your child is specifically Darth Vader-shaped cheeseburgers-- but please start introducing vegetables into their diet, even though they never eat them. Remember that the school switched all homework entirely over to the iPad, so you're going to have to make sure they're avoiding all of the iPad's other capabilities. Also, let's schedule your audition for 2:45, just late enough for you to miss an entire day's pay. Tomorrow, can you also take little Gordon's friends Timon, Zacharia, and Raymond to ballroom dancing, and make sure they all eat their snacks along the way while not getting hit by cars? Additionally, don't eat a normal lunch or dinner at a normal lunch and dinner time. But, I mean, basically, at the end of the day, your job is "just" to get them to do their homework; that shouldn't be asking too much!
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| Wipe those smiles off your pretty faces; I know you're lying. |
Of course it's never asking too much. You have a job that requires you to work 4 hours a day at $25/hour, making it enough to pay your rent, plus some. And you don't have to serve tables or dance with your clothes off. But the reason you know those smiles are fake is because, at the end of the work day, I don't feel like this:
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And you know that once you walk out that door, those smiles turn into this:
Last week, my Pinterest was overcome with pins titled "Restitution Consequences", "25 Ways To Ask Your Kids 'So How Was School Today?' Without Asking Them 'So How Was School Today?', and "How a Glass of Water Helped My Child Understand His Emotions" instead of paleo pumpkin cookies and DIY Halloween costumes, as it should have been. I leave work every day wondering what I did wrong, what I could have done better, and why anyone would ever raise a child in New York City. Then, I call my parents and ask them for parenting advice, which is mostly me venting. Babysitting the same kids every day Monday through Friday-- picking them up from school, helping them with homework, organizing playdates, monitoring social interactions and public behavior, carting to and from activities on busses and subways, socializing with other nannies and moms, preparing and feeding dinner, and keeping up the bathing routine-- is much more of a job than outsiders suspect. I'm not "just" a babysitter. For 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, I'm responsible for helping to raise these kids. I'm part of a coalition of women, and the occasional man, who give up much of their mental sanity to ensure the mental sanity of parents. And it ain't easy.
There are easy-ish babysitting jobs, yes, they're out there. Last year, I was blessed to have an 11-year-old who, a few weeks ago, revealed to me that she "felt bad that [I] couldn't say no, so [she] just stopped asking for things." The hardest part of my job, and what it mainly consisted of, was working against the genius system of her private school to put all of her homework on an iPad, where she could access the Internet. Oh, but don't worry-- they could only add 2 game apps. Thanks so much for that help.
Then, there are the jobs that require you to put on your big girl panties and become the least fun babysitter ever: when your kids threaten, in more ways than one, to get their parents to fire you; when you're called "stupid" on a daily basis; when you're forced to spend 5 hours playing on the living room floor of a studio-sized apartment with an antagonistic 5-year-old who's just broken his leg and can't move. All of which you take, because you can't pass up that money.
I'm not saying babysitting isn't hard elsewhere-- I've experienced it! But I've never experienced children like those here in NYC, because no other place is NYC. After one of my first sitting gigs in the city, for a very wealthy and successful family, I stayed an extra 40 minutes into the already late night talking with, or, rather, listening to the father who'd returned home. His 2nd-grade son had been one of the hardest nuts to crack ever; he was rude, arrogant, and bossy, and he'd refused to go to sleep. The father came in with a brown bag of $15 burger and fries, sat down at the massive dining table, and began chowing down fistfuls, speaking in the process of barreling greasy fries into his mouth. Never once did he offer me a seat at the table, or anything to eat, or even a glass of water. As I leaned awkwardly against the wall, he reacted to my praise of his beautiful, huge, double-french-door-ed three-bedroom apartment with dismissive critiques of the place and all of the changes he needs to make. For example, their country home has a movie theatre. He speaks of his days as a young actor, moving to LA to pursue film until he realized that he loved money and switched to finance. The climax of the most annoying yet fascinating conversation ever came at this: "Well, you know, she's always darting out of some town car here, and I'm always working or meeting with clients there, so, you know. We don't get to spend a lot of time with the kids, which stinks, but... [shrugs] You do what you gotta do."
No, sir; I don't know. After those 40 minutes of utter shock were finished and I closed the apartment door behind me, I actually started to cry. Real tears formed in my real eyes! For the first time of many times to come, I was overcome with the urge to call my parents. It was past 11pm, so I couldn't do that, but I just wanted to thank them. The next day, I did call each of them, and I thanked them for... for what? For being there, for teaching me the value of a dollar, for raising me whatever way they did, for instilling respect, for sending me to public school? "For everything."
Thankfully, my long-term babysitting jobs have been for parents who are there for their children in so many ways. Yet, I wish-- and I wish for the parents-- that we could open the back door, let the kids out, and yell "dinner's at 6!" through the closing screen as they race to the trampoline for the afternoon. Maybe then I wouldn't have to fear keeping them out of my sight for longer than 2 minutes, as they'd probably not be tempted to kill each other with this newfound freedom.
Know what we do. Respect the mouth behind the sentence "I'm a babysitter." There's no easy way to make rent money as an actor, so I might as well choose the one that comes with tests of my patience, hope for the next generation, and ability to resist an apartment full of child-friendly carbs. You gots ta do you, man, so choose the most money for the littlest time, interacting with the fewest people. There's no shame in shame, especially if the kids are cute.
(Let's be serious, they totally are, always. Their smiles melt my heart and every non-poop-related laugh is like hearing an iPhone update bug is fixed. I will sit at the toddler-sized table listening to a child pronounce Pokemon names til kingdom come!)
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