Best Child Care Tip for Grandparents

Best Child Care Tip for Grandparents

Easy Does It
A definite benefit of grand-parent child care duty (aka babysitting) is that you are never have to be rushed. Nev-er! When "baby sitting", you want nothing more than to occupy yourself so that time moves along at a good clip. 

OK, first of all, let me say on the record, babysitting is not distasteful duty. It's a labor of love, just not as enchanting as, say, teen-age infatuation. With babysitting, the "sitter" generally, wants time to move along and one of the best ways to accomplish that is to be distracted.

As a consequence, you do everything in your power to go in slow motion during all distractions (aka - life in general). In other words, waste time, at every opportunity - always. Everyone knows that time goes faster when you're doing something and wasting time, is still doing something, so taking three times as long to do every task, makes the day (the babysitting) go faster. You're occupied, so time moves quicker. Makes sense. 

What I have just begun to understand is that wasting time while babysitting, not only doesn't make you anxious like wasting time in “real life”, but it can also be very relaxing and provide a rare advantage to assert control over the normal hyper-aware-dominant-species in your charge (the children), mainly because they don’t know you’re doing it.

It is in the car that this advantage manifests itself best. The pre-K crowd has no clue whatsoever that you are wasting time when you drive around the block. If they protest you can even say, “Just wasting time,” - almost sing it, like the song,   “Sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time.” - and they still won’t get it.

No response, no whining - just one of the facts of life when riding in a car.  The only weapon that they have is the “how much longer?” whine which they seem to have learned not to ask the baby sitter on local excursions. 

A caveat: Things might be different with kids older than eight.

 

OK, Place Your Orders

Regardless, by my calculation today, a parent will appear sometime after 4:30. Presently it is 11:30 so plenty of time to waste – ha ha. 

I am downtown, Madison, NJ, parked illegally in front of a Sabrett Hot Dog Cart. The three characters that I've been trucking around are seated on a sidewalk bench eating a hot dog, each with catsup and mustard. I had insisted that each place his own order. Stand in front of the man, tell him what you want, trimmings and all, hand over the money ($2), bring me the change (25 cents). They do all of this without objection. It takes a good number of minutes (the point), after which I direct them to the bench.

I lean up against a Garden State Parkway sign and watch. It is a picture perfect scene. Three innocent five-year-olds sitting on a bench eating a hot dog.  

Johnny, a quick eater - takes after grandpa - requests another.

“Anyone else want another?” I inquire.

Dumb question. Both Val and Francis raise their hands, despite the fact that they’re still nursing their first. “Yo - all of you – when you’re done come tell the man how you want your next hot dog.” They look at me. I know what they are thinking – “You tell him. Ask us what we want, but you tell him.” 

Sorry, no dice.

 

Sorry Folks

I lean back against the sign. No rush.

Ooops, am I blocking drivers' view of the Parkway sign? I should slide over. OK, that’s better - Parkway straight ahead, folks. Sorry. 

 A parking spot opens in front of me. I dash to my car, roll it off of the illegal yellow line marked spot and into the legal spot. 

 When I get back out of the car, I get a brilliant idea. I announce that we’re walking to the train station. 

 The kids stand up. “No no, finish your food first,” I say, "no rush." I go back to the Parkway sign. Everything in due course.

 

 Hey! Slow Down

Finally we take off, walking. I mosey along but it seems that the kids want to run. Fine, but five year olds don’t always stop at corners so I have to yell a lot – mostly the words, “Wait, wait.”

This works but it is embarrassingly loud on the Main Street at lunch time. There’s a bit of a harried feeling when we reach the station. Let's just say, it was not a pleasant stroll. 

“I’ve got to look at the train schedules upstairs,” I say, an obvious lie, but what do they know? They're five. Still, there is the running – pounding up the stairs, through the waiting room and out to the platform where trains fly by. This is not working out. I grab the two ring-leaders, John and Val.

“You two have to walk next to me – got that?” They shake their heads, nod agreement.

I don’t succeed much in controlling the pace here. Guess that’s another point – unless they’re on a leash, they more or less dictate the clip.

Watching the Clock

OK, fine. Eventually we get back to the car. What time is it? 12:30, not bad. “Everybody buckled? Take your time, buckle up - no rush." 

They have no clue.

The plan for the afternoon is play in John’s backyard. That’s four hours, which is long. I spot a library book on the front seat next to me. “I just have to return this library book before we go to John’s,” I say. No problem. They really are nice kids.

At the library, I request that kids deliver the book to the outside return slot. An argument ensues. They all want to put the book into the slot. “OK, look,” I say, thinking of an adult type of solution, “Val, you carry the book up the walk. Francis, you open the slot. John you put it in the slot. OK?” 

This doesn’t fly, at least not with John and Val. 

Francis gets my vote as most agreeable. I remind myself to tell his mother - best behaved. The other two seem to be still debating the book return procedure as they trudge up the walk. Seemingly in discussion, they dilly-dally in front of the book deposit slot. No problem, take your time, boys. They’re out of earshot so I don’t care about their disagreements. I watch the drama from the car.  

Eventually, library business accomplished, I pull onto the street of my daughter’s house, normally a two minute ride from town, which I have expanded to over ten minutes. It is almost 1 PM. “Not bad,” I think, “I’m more or less a pro at this.”