"Get a baby-sitter." they say, these mothers of home-grown children. "Get a baby-sitter." they say, as they extol the merits of the sanity break, defend the expense, and make me want to weep.
Baby-sitters are one of the key areas in which -- in our experience -- what works for home-grown kids, most dreadfully does not work for post-institutional kids, at least not for our eldest.
Garbanzo had nearly 7 years of care-givers that were staff, care-givers that rotate on-and-off shift, that may or may not be emotionally invested in the children they looked after, and that can be angered, disappointed, deceived, and manipulated with no lasting effects.
Then he got us and (big surprise) treated us as paid staff that can be angered, disappointed, deceived, and manipulated with no lasting effects. It is really really hard for him to understand, much less live out, the difference between an orphanage-living arrangement and a family-living arrangement. Putting him into the care of others sets him right back to orphanage-mode. And why not? He had 6 highly formative years of that, and only 2.5 years of this.
This is why we home-school, because the institutional setting of school triggers anti-family behavior patterns. The same anti-family behavior patterns that are triggered by spending time with a paid care-giver that most likely is not emotionally invested in the children, and that can be angered, disappointed, deceived, and manipulated with no lasting effects.
In fact, manipulating and deceiving the care-giver is one of the favorite ways to pass the time. "So what?" you may ask. "Let him torment the sitter, pay her well, and move on." The problem is that Garbanzo sees us as merely the next shift and it takes a vast amount of time and energy and tears and gnashing of teeth to re-settle him into family mode.
You may wonder then why we just enrolled them in public school. Because the school will look after them when I can't and we have no other options.
I would love to hire a baby-sitter. I would love to not feel so trapped and alone. I would love to have that be a healthy option for our family. I envy those of you with emotionally normal kids that can handle this basic tool of parenting. It's just not a tool that we get to use yet.
