Au Pair Confessions

I have a confession: I didn't take this job because I wanted to work with kids.

I've been working with kids in various capacities since I was about Middle's age. Throughout the years I've been a babysitter, a tutor, a nanny, a teacher, and a respite caregiver. I genuinely enjoyed every one of those experiences. In fact, there's a good chance I want to make a career out of working with very small children. But after spending all of college working almost exclusively with adults I got out of the habit of crayons and cookies and Polly Pocket, and I didn't really feel the need to go back.

I decided to be an au pair because it was the best way for me to live abroad. Punto final.
I suspect this might be the dirty secret of a lot of au pairs.

I wanted to live in Europe; I didn't want to spend all my money to do it; I wanted to use my education, but didn't want to be a teacher. That left me with au pairing, even though theoretically the idea of working as a live-in nanny was not my ideal venue.
Now that I've actually lived that role for several months, I can say that indeed it isn't my favorite job. There are plenty of days I'd rather not tutor Little through another science lesson or put in the effort to give Middle an entertaining English class.

But the chance to be part of these three girls' lives for six months has been worth every single minute.

My mom is a nanny for my cousin's three young children. I see her make a serious effort to spend time with them off the clock. She tells me she doesn't want to turn into just 'the babysitter;' it's important that she still gets to be their aunt sometimes.
I've adopted this mindset. I don't ever want me or the girls to feel like they're invading on 'my time' when Oldest asks me to watch a movie with her on a Friday night, or Middle wants to kick my butt at Rummikub on a Saturday afternoon, or Little gets it into her head to undertake making cake pops.

For both my mom and I, our jobs are working with kids, but that doesn't means the kids should be the job.

I have the opportunity to meet each of my girls for who they are and where they are in their lives. The more I learn about them as people, the more I have developed a sense of pride in what I do and who I get to be for them.

The other day, it was Middle's turn to walk Toro, and she only took him for a quick turn around the block in her hurry to go to the pool. Oldest, a dedicated student who was studying every spare minute for all her end of the semester exams, decided to take him for a longer walk because she thought it was so unfair that he'd been cheated out of his usual time. I don't know many adults who have that level of compassion in a situation they just as easily could have ignored, much less an over-stressed high school student.

Middle is going through a rough patch trying to make the jump from kid to teenager. She knows where she wants to be, but hasn't quite figured out how to get there yet, and all too often gets in her own way. Of the three, I've had the hardest time connecting with her thanks to the awkwardness of this transition period, but I fiercely believe in the person she's trying to become. Her sharp wit, sarcastic sense of humor and insane stubbornness are going to be her greatest assets as much as they're her biggest obstacles right now. There's something very important about having other adults you can trust when you go through the inevitable period of butting heads with your parents, and I take that role very seriously.

Little is growing up a little more every day as we approach her eighth birthday. In the last two and a half months, we've built our jokes and routines, and discovered a shared sense of humor that spans the age gap. Every time I think I don't have a drop of patience left, she manages to do something so incredibly sweet or funny I can't help but laugh. We've been working on the times tables all semester, and I taught her the memory trick "8 and 8 fell on the floor, when they came back up they were 64." Unprompted by me, that problem came up at the dinner table one day and she muttered the rhyme to herself before giving the answer. Then she turned to me and said, "You know, Kat, I still don't think I'd remember that one without that." The intense pride I feel in what I do lives in those smallest of moments.

I became an au pair so I could live in Spain, but the real confession is that's ended up being the least important part of these 177 days.