On the train ride to my in-laws for Passover on Friday
night, five young women, some in college, some graduates, started cracking
each other up with stories about babysitting for Manhattan
families. Of course, I couldn’t get enough of it. I tried to maintain
a facade of middle-age disinterest, keeping my eyes on my newspaper, until
I just lost it. I literally had to put my hand over my mouth I was
laughing so much. My cover blown, I identified myself as one of those Manhattan
parents, not to mention the editor of this family magazine. —
There was one in the bunch who was an especially astute
observer. Her friends egged her on. “Jen, tell your stories. You have the best
babysitting stories.”
Jen [whose name has been changed] described how she once showed up at a family’s home and there were already five people attending to this one
4-year-old girl—“The mother, the grandmother, the cook, the person—what do they
call her?—the person who does the laundry, someone else—I wasn’t sure why they needed
me. I think they needed me so the girl would have someone else to dump on
besides them. She turned out to be a hitter. So I got face-to-face with her
and said, ‘You will never hit me again, or there will be consequences.’ And the
mother was like, ‘Do you have to talk so strictly to her? Can’t you use the
star chart?’ And I’m thinking, the star chart? How’s that been working for
you? The star chart is not going to work on a 4-year-old who has a Mercedes
drive her to the bathroom. ”
I don’t even know if I was laughing at the girl,
the mom, the situation, the use of a star chart in the face of constant spoiling,
or just being able to hear all of this stuff from the other side. Naturally, I
tried to recruit all of them to write a tell-all blog post. Who wouldn’t read
that?
As a parent though, I wouldn’t fret too much about what your
sitter really thinks of you. Underpinning all their stories was a sense
that these girls really liked the kids they took care of—and were not unsympathetic
to how overwhelmed parents can be. Apparently, other passengers on the train
felt the same way.
After I departed the laugh-in to transfer to another train,
another passenger approached me on the platform, introduced himself as a Manhattan
dad with a baby, and asked me how he can find a sitter!
—Eric Messinger
