It’s summertime, our windows are open, fresh air fills our homes and we are reminded, once again, just how closely together our houses were built. Doubtlessly, you have heard extremely loud, perhaps even blood-curdling screams coming from our apartment between 5:30 and 6pm several evenings a week.

“What on earth,” you have probably asked yourselves, “is that woman doing to her children?”

The answer, really, is nothing. Well, not nothing exactly. I am probably rushing around, unloading the dishwasher and trying to make them their dinner. Usually, I try to close the windows so that the noise is somewhat muffled, but experience has taught me that the faster I get some protein into their little bellies, the faster the mood of the house will change.

You see, we are having problems with transition time. It used to be much, much worse when my little boy would have a sobbing fit whenever we had to go from home time to outside time, playtime to meal time, from meal time to washing time, and from washing time to that merciful period known as nap time.

Really, he should have outgrown this stage and for the most part he has. All that remains is this particular “end of day” exhaustion, frustration, and hunger transition. By the time I have finished work, picked up the kids and brought everyone home, both kids have fallen asleep in the car and been rudely awoken to find themselves hungry, tired and not where they remember last being.

It makes the big boy cry and, when that happens, the little one starts too. Accustomed to having his needs addressed after those of a crying baby, the boy starts yelling louder as soon as his sister starts. In turn, sensing an escalation in the gravity of the situation, the girl turns her volume up to maximum until we have the cacophony you have no doubt heard.

While I do try to pat them on their backs and speak soothing words of comfort in a quiet voice, they really can’t hear me and seem immune to a soft touch while tensing their muscles to scream.

It’s not all bad. In fact, if you’d like to view this interruption as a service we provide, you can use the noise to time parts of your day by. It lasts for exactly the length of time it takes to soft boil a few eggs and toast two slices of bread. I am sorry I can’t make the quickest meal I know how to provide a little more quickly. I’ll work on it.

Until then, I would like to assure you that we are not beating or otherwise abusing our children and, like you, we hope this period of child development will pass quickly.

Thank you for your understanding,

Kate (a/k/a the foreign woman at the end of the street)

Post from: Babylune

Nursery school, pre-school, kindergarten, babysitters and day cares.

Oh my.

This morning at work I was talking with a student who also has a four year-old who is in kindergarten (A German Kindergarten is like a North American pre-school for children ages 3 to 6) from 7:30 am to 1pm every day. My son, goes from roughly 8:30 to almost 4 from Monday to Thursday. On Fridays his Kindergarten closes at 3:30 and on the last Wednesday of every month at 1:30. The crazy schedule, though, is nothing compared to my worries that they let the kids run a little too wild or the fear I felt when I picked him up with a cut on his head after falling off the slide.

Still, Kindergarten is a breeze compared to our trouble with babysitters. Once, someone called Social Services to inform us that our son’s carer was an alcoholic.

Now that I am back at work and my son is in Kindergarten, I have been flying in a succession of relatives who have been taking care of the baby for month at a time. The only thing that makes me feel safe and secure enough to do my job is the fact that my daughter is with someone who loves her. Still, it is very expensive and I can’t write the cost of airfare, room and board, or financial gifts off on my taxes.
According to an article in the Guardian, I am not alone in my caregiver angst:

• The in-depth poll of 2,000 working mothers of under-fives has brought into focus the pressures many parents face. Only 23% of mothers say their company allows them paid time off if their child is ill, yet many children are unable to attend nursery even if they have a cold.
• A perceived lack of training among nursery staff is cited as a concern by three in 10 mothers, and a fifth say they have removed their child from nursery due to poor treatment of the infant.
• Ideally, according to the Childcare Survey of Great Britain 2006, mothers would like a nanny – but with wages reaching £650 a week in London, just one in 20 can afford it. However, even wealthy parents who have nannies are not immune from feeling guilty, with 86% worrying that their nannies are becoming closer to their children than they are. Overall, 83% of mothers are pleased with their nannies, who typically work 61 hours a week.
• Libby Rowley of the Discovery channel’s Home and Health TV programme, which commissioned the survey, said that what working mothers really wanted was “a wife” to care for their children at home when they were at work. Of the women questioned, 5% had a nanny, 3% shared a nanny, 44% used a nursery, 29% had a childminder, 15% relied on parents and 4% had a partner who was a house husband.

I know that the house husband, the adventures of one can be read about at Inside Fatherhood, is a great phenomenon. If you can afford to lose the second income. We went without my income for as long as we could, but I got tired of having holes in my shoes and worries about being able to afford to visit our families.

I wish, that I had the opportunities my sister has. Her oldest goes to pre-school two or three mornings a week to have a little social interaction and spent the rest of my sister’s work week with her grandmother. Now that my sister is on maternity leave again, both grandmothers are there to make sure she gets a rest.

I am really, really happy for my sister and other women with mothers and mothers-in-law of their own who are prepared to care for another generation of children (our own mother is still working). At the same time, I wish there were an easier solution for women like me with no one around.

Post from: Babylune