This is my Job

How Babysitting has Kept Me Afloat Mentally and Financially

I stood outside the private Philadelphia preschool where tuition was close to that of the college I recently withdrew from. Cliques of those waiting to pick up their child or child of their employer stood around the pristine playground. There were the stay at home moms in their athleisure, often with strollers that held a fussy sibling. The working moms, either in their cars or tapping their phones impatiently. 

The au pairs– usually older women, seemingly omniscient. They knew each other, each of the kids, and how to handle the fussy sibling in the stroller. They didn’t take any shit. The au pairs would win in a Hunger Games competition if each clique were to team up. All of the cliques are badass, though. Whether you’re balancing a career and children or dealing with children all day- you are tough. 

My straggly clique would lose the Hunger Games. I was part of the babysitters. Women in college who watched kids part-time. There were those friendly with the teachers, clearly having done pick-up for a while but most likely on their way out of the babysitting game. There were the newbies- first week on the job, a little quiet, head in their phone, unsure of exactly how pick-up works. I was somewhere in between but constantly told myself I was on my way out. This was a temporary job. It was April of 2016. By October I would move to LA.

I waited for my five year old to be released from the thresholds of school, and for myself to be released from the thresholds of a city I was sure was suffocating me. Both of us were watching the clock; however, I was the one who could tell time. And that was a burden.

The pick-up at the wealthy preschool went something like this: the kids would come out full of energy and freedom. If it was a nice day, there was utter anarchy at the school playground. Several times I was a monster chased by each of the kids. I remember pretending to be down for the count–their freeze powers worked on my monster alter ego. At once I had six kids surrounding me, I couldn’t see past their wall of smiling faces. I couldn’t move because I was “frozen”- and part of me wished a magical force could put a pause on me throughout the day. Take more moments to laugh and play. 

After the playground, my five year old and I often took the bus the eight blocks up to his house. Sometimes we’d walk, but that took a lot of distractions. Through the “I’m tired” “my legs can’t go anymore,” we would come up with scenarios about other planets. The perfect planets–unlimited candy, screentime, toys. And the planets with a catch–“Octonauts plays on a loop all day but you can only eat broccoli.” I knew that every real world came with a catch, but it was just as imaginary as the perfect world to him. 

There is a routine to babysitting amid the chaos. Kids are creatures of habit, whether their schedules are set by a strict parent or they’re toddlers who like playing the same exact game over and over again. I am adamantly opposed to routine; I fear it. I don’t want to be ruled by a schedule. And there were many times where I thought I’d rather crush my head with a toy truck than play yet another round of peek-a-boo. 

But I look back on every nanny job with a sense of contentment. The child’s schedule would become my own. It was okay because I had a little hand squeezing mine. We would follow the routine because their well-being meant more to me than any of my fears. I held their hand to cross the street and they held mine to take me on adventures. Because no matter how much you box in a kid, they do or say something unpredictable every day. 

I’ll never forget one of the days when the bus was late. His mom always said we could call an Uber if necessary but we tried to avoid it. On this day, however, the five year old was begging for an Uber. He wanted to get home. The bus had been stuck at the stop up the street for a half hour. So I finally gave in and called the Uber.

A couple of minutes later the bus starts to move. The five year old proceeds to stand near the edge of the sidewalk, waving down the bus as if waving down a taxi, looking over his shoulder at me saying “cancel the Uber, cancel the Uber”.

This story is one I constantly retell. I don’t know if it’s the confidence he had waving down a bus as if it was only running for him, the fact a five year old knows what “canceling an Uber” means, or that in that moment he seemed grown, adapting to his routine. 

When I cancel an Uber it feels like the end of the world; $5 is precious (cancellation fee), and I’m frustrated by everything being thrown off. Of course a child does not have a concept of money, but I would love to be able to see a smelly city bus as equal to a black luxury Uber. 

So we sat on the bus playing our game of I-Spy, entered his courtyard where he checked the packages every single day; he ALWAYS expected toys from a grandparent. I nannied another child who also loved to check packages for herself- she would take the box opener from the foyer drawer and cut through them like it was as normal as brushing your teeth.

I’m not here to comment on the changes of children through generations. Because every single generation thinks of their childhood as a “better, more simple time to grow up”. Yes, they check for Amazon packages, do some homework on an iPad, know what an Uber is, and have more complex toys.

But I find their imagination to be just as vast. And next in the routine was play.

We filled so much time with play. At the park, at a friends, between activities, until the second before dinner was ready, in slots of time I would typically spend scrolling on my phone. In his playroom (a whole room dedicated to play- we need that as adults) we had “battles” with Star Wars characters and dinosaurs. We sometimes made maps of our plans on a piece of paper. I got lost in the room as much as he did.

My laughing while being chased by him and his preschool friends, my ability to create imaginary scenarios, my energy to distract him on the bus, my getting lost in play; it’s not such a crazy concept. However, during this time in my life, a smile was an unlikely occurrence.

In 2015-2016 I experienced one of the worst depression episodes of my life. And that’s what led me to having a pretend battle plan on a piece of construction paper with a crayon rather than a typed resume with lists of accomplishments. 

My friends were working at an office or as a teacher or doing “real adult jobs” in my eyes. While I was throwing birthday parties for American Girl Dolls (that company has REALLY stepped their game up, by the way) or setting up scavenger hunts and challenges that sometimes utilized drinking games (kids love flip cup- minus the alcohol, of course). 

When I think of a babysitter, I think of a high school girl watching her neighbors down the street. For a while when people asked me what I did I would say “I just babysit”. Sometimes I’d follow with a self-deprecating joke, or “it’s very temporary while I try to make it as a writer.” But I ALWAYS said “just.” I couldn’t help it.

My work outfit is leggings and t-shirt, my lunch break includes eating fruit snacks, and I am deeply invested in the plots animated movies and Bluey. To some people, this probably sounds like a dream. But it is fucking hard, it is work, it’s exhausting. I am a nanny. No “just.” This is my “real adult” job. Childcare workers are as real as it gets. 

It was interesting watching myself slowly get back to normal while nannying for that first time. I was out of the trenches of my depression episode by then, but it was still orbiting around me. Part of me worried the kid could see this orbit. And I wanted to protect it from him at all costs. 

Life’s biggest problem will forever be how to set up an awesome hot wheels track, not what to do when you feel so numb that you’re wondering if you belong here. You’ll wave down that city bus like it’s there just for you, because you are HERE and you’re WORTHY. 

So I covered up the scars on my wrist, and put on a fake smile those first couple of weeks. The scars eventually began to fade and my smile wasn’t fake. I wasn’t ready to write again, but my creativity came flooding back- whether it be taking him to an imaginary parallel universe or coloring beside him. By the time I read the clock as “go to LA,” I was unsure if I wanted to be able to tell time.

I believed that when I moved, I would be done with watching kids in order to make an income. Even if it was a different part-time job, I’d go with something where I’d be interacting with people my own age. Maybe I’d bartend, or freelance, or get an administrative role. Yet, I found myself coming back to nannying again and again. 

It has now been nine years since that first job. And after a day of work there is usually chalk in my hair or marker on my hand or a rogue sticker attached to my shoe or a pocket where I find a trinket I had been hiding as a treasure. Notes in my phone of funny things a four-seven year old has said that day:
*receives an envelope, opens it, then throws it* “just another dumb family holiday card. Not my letter to Hogwarts.” 

Notes in my phone of embarrassing moments I can maybe include in future writing:
“I am 29 years old being picked up by my employer from my parent’s house. My employer is the father of the two year old I’ve been nannying for about a year. What is my life.”

Notes in my phone of moments that make my embarrassing moments worth it:
“Yesterday I had a breakdown. I haven’t slept or felt good about myself in days. Yet here I am waving a fuzzy star wand, in a rainbow tutu, being a fairy princess AND an evil mermaid all at once. I have powers.”

-end of excerpt-