Sunday, January 12, 2014

The Art of Au Pairing

Line up! Yep everyone is here.
Somewhere deep down he loves me.
Little Picasso over here.

The art of au pairing isn’t hard to master...(Sorry I couldn’t resist. That's for all you poetry lovers out there.) I decided it would be appropriate to dedicate a post to my biggest priority here in France: taking care of children. I have to admit that I really had NO idea what I was getting myself into when I signed up to be an au pair. I have babysat a handful of times, but that was a long time ago, and this is completely different. When you're a part-time babysitter, you watch kids for 2 to 4 hours tops, and then you’re on your way. But with this gig, you are living with the family. You’re there for every tantrum, screaming fest, adorable moment, fight between the parents, and even the news that your host mom is pregnant. Before I start I have to say that deep down I absolutely adore both of the little boys I take care of, and I would do anything for them. That being said, they can be pretty terrible sometimes. I think the biggest challenge at first was the language barrier. For example, I remember one of my first weeks, the youngest boy (he’s three) had just woken up from a nap and wouldn’t stop crying and screaming. I am talking face red, screaming at the top of his lungs, kicking the wall by his bed so hard that his bed moved a foot type of crying. Every time I came up to him to try to calm him down, he started hitting me. He started screaming a phrase in French that I couldn’t understand and just kept repeating it. 15 minutes later, we make it downstairs, I wrestle (literally wrestle) with him to get his clothes on, and we are standing outside and invested in a screaming match where I'm trying desperately to convince him to come with me to pick up his older brother (who gets out of school in 5 minutes). At this moment, through his screaming, I can see the sheer frustration in his little tear-filled face and that he is so badly wanting to be understood as I am also on the verge of tears myself and wondering why I just completed five years of college to be fighting with a three year old. All of the sudden, I recognize the word “verre” which means glass. I stop everything to turn to him and say (in French), “You want a glass of water?” He immediately stops crying and sheepishly nods his head wiping the tears off his little, red cheeks. My life is now filled with ironically frustrating moments similar to this.

Things have vastly improved since my first weeks, including my French. The one thing I repeatedly have to make myself do when I get really frustrated with the boys is to take a deep breath, step back, and remember that I am talking with a child. It really is hard when you are not used to being with children, because they look at life in a completely different way than adults do. Things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things can be a matter of life and death in their eyes. Another thing I had to get used to was not taking what they say personally. One minute they say they hate you and you are the worst person in the world and literally 5 minutes later, they are in love with you. I think the most important lesson that I've learned (which has made me deeply appreciate my parents) is the fact that children really have no concept of how much you do for them. When I am with the boys and responsible for their lives, I think about myself the very last. Every little thing you do is for them. Whether it be washing their piece of kiwi because you accidentally got a SPECK of chocolate powder on it (in the midst of breakfast table madness), making sure not to wash one of their hands during bath time so their star stamp doesn’t come off, or walking all the way downstairs again to get the correct stuffed animal after struggling for thirty minutes just to get them into bed. After all these things, there is never a thank you. Kids simply don’t understand all that you do for them. I think this has been really important for me to go through, because it's made me realize and appreciate the different things that different people have done for me throughout my life.

When it is all said and done, there really is no art in raising or taking care of a child. I think the only thing you really can do is give them unconditional love and make them feel safe. Even though I have only been here for four and a half months, I already love these two boys as if they were my little brothers. I can’t imagine what it will be like after one year.

À bientôt!

(At the request of my host family I decided not to include any pictures of the boys.)

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