On Babies and Children AKA I'm Selfish and Very Selective About My Life

Hello lovelies,

In case you didn't know, I've been working at an out of school hours childcare centre for just over a year now. I started in late October last year, just before I finished my final school exams. I took the job because I needed one, desperately, and probably would have taken anything. Although really, I did take just about anything as, upon hearing about my new job, my mother's reaction was 'But you don't even like kids!'

Harsh words mother, harsh words.

But, very true.

Very, very true.

But, I really needed a job and everywhere a tried they wanted experience, experience, experience. And this was something that I didn't have. I'd never had a job - my busy school schedule just didn't allow it. But I was rapidly approaching turning 18 without ever having a job and when you get to that age and have never been employed at all - people start thinking that there's something wrong with you.

So, when this offer came through, I didn't hesitate. I really wanted a job and I wasn't going to pass the offer up simply because I disliked children.

It is no secret to anyone that knows me that I don’t like children or babies. Why would you? They stare at you. They are smelly, they can’t look after themselves, you can’t understand them and so far, I'm not really seeing any pros to them. I have told my mother in no uncertain terms that I do not have plans to have kids. She will not be getting grand children from me. Pregnancy sounds like a bitch and don’t even talk to me about giving birth… Not my kettle of fish…

My worst nightmare...

My first shift only reinforced these beliefs. I had to make slime with these munchkins. It went everywhere. It got into their hair, up their arms, on their sneakers and then they couldn't wash it off and some people wanted to take their slime home and it was busy and bleh! I was not a happy person. It was chaos and I was left with one bucket of goo on the table in front of me and what seemed like another entire bucket clogging up the sinks and I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

And then, slowly, over the next couple of days and weeks, it was quieter. There were less kids. They got more used to me.  They began to talk. And soon, I found myself listening to one girl’s holiday to Holland and hearing how another girl’s brother likes to run around the house with no pants on. I shared blister stories with a girl that loves the monkey bars and I helped a boy make a collage for his mum. One little girl wanted to hold my hand when we went on a bushwalk and I didn’t even mind (much). One girl drew me a picture (don’t know what it is, but the thought is there) and another made me a necklace – ‘because I was new’. I helped four 9-year-old boys dismantle a printer and I helped another make a comic book. I even pretended I knew what the hell a ‘feather harbour’ was as another boy proudly showed me his drawing.

Source

Before I knew it, I knew most of the kids’ names. I knew who was whose sister and who was whose friend. I knew the softies from the idiots and found that I actually liked the little delinquents – they had some spirit.

I found out about the tragedies that had befallen some of our kids - a dad's suicide, a mother's drinking problem that caused short term memory loss in her son and some pretty shitty sounding home lives.

Suddenly, I found that I loved going to work. Suddenly, rather than being just another chore, it was the highlight of my day. Suddenly, I discovered that these kids, for all their faults, were wonderful gorgeous unique hilarious beautiful individual people. They were not the 'children' that I thought they were, they were people, just like me. They weren't a different species, they were just like me. I mean sure, sometimes we differed on opinions and I still didn't understand what they were saying some of the time and we had some very different interests, but they were still people. And people I can do. People aren't scary.

I began to share my stories. I refused to treat them like babies. To be honest, I don't know how to do that. All I know is how to talk to people. 

However, I like these children

However, nearly a year later, I still haven't changed my fundamental view on children - I still don't want any of my own (sorry mum). I like them lots, no scratch that. I love all my kids to bits. I love babysitting them and looking after them after school and I absolutely love running into them at the shops or petrol station. And I really, really love giving them back to their parents at the end of the day.

No matter how much people try to tell me that I really love kids (and I'm not disagreeing with them either) and that I'd make a great mother and that they can see me with kids (maybe because I look after them as a job?) I'm pretty firm on this.

And this for a couple of reasons. Mostly because I'm selfish. I don't want to have to give up 20 plus years of my life looking after a child nor put large amounts of money into raising the kid (children are expensive!) nor go though the trials of pregnancy but also because I got a pretty shoddy run with the gene pool. I ended up with an eating disorder (the traits for which have been proven to be hereditary), depression (also likely to be hereditary judging my my mother's family history) and anxiety (I don't know about this one). Equally, I have a 50% chance of having CMT, which is a nerve disorder that affects the nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord. So if I was going to have kids at all, I would adopt. Also, if I was a mother I'd lose my cool factor. If I'm just an aunt or a friend I can be cool and only visit every three to four weeks and be fun and exciting when I do come.

But to be completely honest, I'm just not that into kids on a 24/7 basis. But hey, I'm only 18, I have plenty of time to change my mind.