What Could Go Wrong?

Hiring an au pair is a little like dating -- you do it online, everyone puts his or her best foot forward, and a lot of it boils down to chemistry. It's a little like hiring someone at work, of course, because a person's experience and references must be checked and considered, and there are a lot of paperwork and rules. It's a little like selling your house, because you necessarily describe your life, your family, and indeed your house, including her future bedroom-and-bath, in the sunniest way possible without pretending there are no flaws. And you post pictures.

And hiring an au pair is a little bit like conceiving a kid just so you can harvest cells to save your other kid (you've heard of this, right?). It's like that because when she arrives, an au pair is like another daughter, someone who solves many of your problems, creates some emotional ripples of her own, someone your family ends up caring about very much -- yet everyone is aware she wouldn't be there at all if it weren't for the precious child who came before. She is de facto a second-class citizen.



For a mom like me who works at home most of the time, the au pair takes on an added dimension: we hang out together. I am here, she is here -- at least, a lot of the time. We will be like mom/daughter, friend/friend, employer/employee. What could go wrong?



Right now we're floating through the best part of the whole process: the time after we and the au pair have made a match, but before the au pair has been with us for more than 3 months or so, when the newness wears off. Our new au pair, Sarah, will join us in June, arriving from Germany to New York, spending three days in training and then hopping on a plane to her new bed-and-bath in Clarksburg. We are all in love right now. We chat on the email, we gush a bit on Skype - we are all legitimately very excited (except maybe Little One, who remains fairly sure that the arrival of someone to help watch her for a year means that Mommy and Daddy are leaving for a year-long trip without her). It is fun.



It will stay fun -- in fact, if our experience this time is as positive as last time (and my gut says it will be), we will really benefit from Sarah's part in our lives, beyond more date nights and fewer panicky rush-hours home to get the girl before school lets out. She will be a young woman who learns from us, who makes us feel like we have wisdom to offer; she will teach us about what our daughters will be like when they are 23, and about how Europeans think differently from Americans. We will eat and laugh and travel together. We will learn so much about ourselves and our lives as we translate them for her. Most rewarding of all, we will find in Sarah, I can already tell, another person who deeply loves our kids. That creates a bond that transcends almost anything. Love my kids, I love you.

You Are Here (and I Am There)

Often, the Little One (who is now 4) wears me out before the day even starts. Mornings on school days are tough. She really just wants to hang out, and most mornings finds herself annoyed that we intend to go through the whole rigamarole of school again. Didn't we just do this yesterday?

All that isn't so unusual, of course. In fact, I'm sure she learned it from me. But my question is really about why our interactions, especially negative ones, are so much more emotionally fraught than her dealings with Daddy? She seems extremely attuned to my emotional tenor. Even when I am saying all the right things and trying to be lighthearted and encouraging despite her having royally ticked me off, she reads the emotions in my face and responds to those rather than to the words. Sometimes that means that she makes an effort to apologize, smooth things over, cheer me up ("Are you happy, Mommy?"); other times it just riles her up and the battle royale ensues ("You're not my friend!" "You make me mad!" or, on one memorable occasion, "I haven't met my real mommy yet! I want hungry bugs to come and eat you!"). It's exhausting, for both of us.

The Big Girl and the Boy really don't seem to be like this. They are much more self-contained. The Little One's boundaries are blurred -- and this worries me.