The radio intrudes on my sleep at around 7.30 every morning, and I absorb the news subconsciously for a few minutes before I remember to open my eyes and go and make a cup of tea.
This morning they were interviewing some woman who uses au pairs. Let me rephrase that. They were talking to some woman who entrusts unknown teenage girls with the care of her children.
Does anyone spot the flaw in this arrangement?
It’s not about security checks, references, any of that malarkey. It’s about the fact that bringing up children is a responsibility that cannot be palmed off on to someone who is barely more than a child themselves.
I’m speaking from my own experience, aged 20, looking after three french brats one summer. I hadn’t got the first clue how to look after children, I just wanted to spend the summer in the Alps. I was miserable, and I did a really shit job of looking after them. I drove them to the pool every day, as instructed, and read my book while they caused havoc and refused to do their swimming lessons. I had no control over them, and couldn’t build a relationship with them. The eldest was ten, and he had been cared for by strangers for half his life: a new foreigner would turn up at the beginning of each summer, and the three kids would spend the next few months making her life hell.
On my days off, I travelled around Haute Savoie and even into Italy. I had the best suntan I’ve ever had in my life. I borrowed a load of really good books off my cousin in Geneva. If it hadn’t been for those horrible, badly-behaved children, I’d have had a fantastic time.
But of course they were badly behaved. There was no consistent authority in their lives, just these girls who had no idea how to manage children, and the largely-absent parents, who were very bad at communicating the rules until after they had been broken. I got told off for letting them play in a certain place, without having been told that there was any reason that they shouldn’t play there. It wasn’t a language thing; after about a week I had gone from slightly-tarnished A-level french, to dreaming in the damn language.
The five year old corrected me once when I referred to my bedroom as my bedroom: C’est pas ta chambre. C’est la chambre de la fille au pair.