Sick of other people’s kids

[RaisingYankeesinParis]

Hi, first time posting.

I work part-time (no work on Wednesdays) and have 3 kids: 8, 6 and 2. Since my eldest was 6 now we have shared a nanny with various other families, always at our house.

One little girl leaped off the couch (why!?) and broke my beautiful enormous art nouveau flower pot jardiniere in half.

And recently a two year old managed to detach one of these ceramic twin bird lamps in my girls’ and break one. Hard to describe but this is a feat considering there was furniture to she had to hurdle to get to it etc. Managed to glue it so you can’t really see but beak on one is chipped.

(This is the same kid that climbed INTO a drawer on an antique chest of drawers I had just bought, and who managed to get off this chest of drawers some presents I had wrapped for my kid’s birthday and unwrapped them).

My kids have never broken anything. I am good at setting limits. Put it that way. They like pretty things, they are quiet and big readers. I also spend a lot of time with them and they are the centre of my life.

In 8 yrs of parenting and close contact with other people’s kids, I have noticed some things:

• kids’ behaviour directly reflects how they are raised

• parents who talk a lot about “me time” (whether this is manifested in careers, maintaining a pre-kid style social life or whatever) and getting away from their kids as much as possible tend to have annoying, poorly behaved kids

• standards for what constitutes acceptable behaviour have dropped

• helicoptering results in poorly behaved kids and stressed parents (see Jordan Peterson: you need to be a bit selfish as a parent)

• parents are not, as popularly believed, divided into screens vs no screens, breast vs bottle. Parents are divided into “MY KID’S NEEDS & COMFORT then everyone else’s” vs “Everyone else’s comfort and needs come before my kid’s or at least the two are not incompatible”.

I am firmly in the second camp. I breastfed all three for ages, we have no screens, lots of books. But I have friends with lovely kids who are totally the opposite of me. The key to having lovely kids and not high-maintenance monsters is to put other people’s needs in front of your kids. Unabashedly.

Anyway I think as my youngest will be in school full time in 2022 I will be so relieved to get rid of the permanent presence of other people’s kids in our home and I won’t look back.

Have you told your house insurance that you are using your home as a crèche, could be tricky if parents of the sofa jumper sue you for cutting their daughter on your art nouveau jardiniere vase?

Bloody hell that’s quite some amount of nonsense judgment from Mrs perfect.
Maybe start by not placing fragile antiques in a crèche and you might start liking kids a bit more. Kids should not be expected to behave like 80 year old grannies that sit calmly reading a book under a blanket.

With the greatest of respect 8 is very young to have decided you have it all sussed, and it is great if you do, but the screen thing didn't hit until ours were older and their interest in books can unfortunately lower later too (your two youngest could definitelychang, yay to the 8 yo though!) . People who talk about 'me time' - when the children get past an 8 o clock bedtime you sitting with a book for example becomes more difficult at night- they're always there!!! Plus if you work part time it's not the same as a parent there full time. The breaking stuff isn't great though!!