There are the regulars at Wisekids Playroom who can more or less recognize each other even if they don’t go there daily, and there are the relative strangers. At some point Little Miss and I crossed categories, after I got her a season pass for the month.
(Season passes btw are totally underrated if you have a baby/toddler – without the monthly HKD 1152-with-member-discount pass, you’re looking at HKD 126-also-member-price for every 90 minute session. The problem is the 90 minutes is based on a rigid timing, meaning you pay the same price even if your baby was asleep and you only showed up in the last 30 minutes. If you then want to do the next session, that’s another HKD 126. With the pass however, you can show up for as many 20-minutes-remaining sessions as you want, based completely on whether Her Highness feels like it or you’re still enjoying your caramel machiato as she coos happily with another toddler at the next table, and don’t feel the pain.)
Anyway back to the story. As we start recognizing regulars, a local mum asks curiously if we have a helper – there are often more helpers than mums on weekdays because it’s a nice, safe, clean environment to park helper and child while you run errands I suppose, and we’ve never brought a helper.
Her own helper I had previously identified as being one of the “better” ones, with her 18 month old charge, let’s call him Georgie. Now, we just got back from a total 4 weeks of travel over summer without a helper, so there is a very small part of me that is wistful about being able to farm your child off for a feeding or occasional diaper change. (N-ot very much, but still). Sometimes I even What If? when it comes to missing a career/ former life.
So I chat with Other Mum for awhile before our kids toddle off in different directions, and then after snack time “it” happens. We’re all filing and toddling back into the main play area when Other Mum’s helper calls out, “Georgie, look!” as she cuddles another toddler. Georgie runs further ahead from his mum wailing a little and clinging to the helper who coos, “Aw, we’re jealous?” I duck my head and walk swiftly around them trying not to register the scene, but not quickly enough that I don’t hear Georgie’s mum, “What about this, Georgie? What if Mummy does it, would you be jealous too?”
One of our ex helpers did similar while I worked. Not to the extent of a cuddle, but in a baby class she repeatedly called Rockstar away from me. Finally, I bellowed “Call my son away from me while I am talking to him one more time and YOU’RE FIRED.”
pic from tumblr.com
“DO YOU HEAR ME???” I wasn’t sure she did you see, she was too busy looking around at how many of her friends had heard.
I HOPE THEY ALL DID. Otherwise I didn’t do it right. (By nature I just have too long a fuse. Takes me like, forever.) I quit not too long after that. Then I fired her.
Anyway that’s when I stopped missing my job. That’s when I stopped wondering if I should get a helper who is better with the childcare. Because you look for the best possible “package” to suit your confluence of wants, needs, probability of getting them and well, the odds are just too low that you ever find a helper who is not only good with kids but lets you irrevocably be the mum.
Other Mum didn’t blow. She didn’t have a choice – she has 3 kids and as a stewardess flies at least 10 days a month. I felt so sorry for her. I’m not sure she’d like that so I settled for pretending I didn’t see. I know another mum in banking whose helper announced at an extended family gathering that “of course” the boy toddler under her care loved her best.
That’s when I stop thinking helpers who are good with childcare are better. They are not doing their job of supporting the working mum. So if you ever find that mythical caregiver – the helper who actually takes care of your child well and doesn’t fight with you for your child’s affections – pay her the freaking earth and don’t ever let her leave.
Little Miss at snack time That Day (she’s often the tiniest/youngest joining that many activities, but thanks to Rockstar, which he is very proud of, she isn’t cowed easily by the bigger kids – even when they bowl her over)
Just curious whether your helper jaga the apartment when you are away on overseas vacation or you park her at the maids dormitory? Over here in Singapore, we can park them at maids dormitory through our maid agency.
I think you could do that here, but we didn’t – there were not-to-minor repairs on air con and kitchen appliance units that I “saved” til we were on holiday. The first 2 week trip to Australia we got back and discovered the repairs weren’t effective so then we did the same with the helper in the home during the second bout of repairs. Our development happens to have quite tight security with the cameras that they even use to trace when one kid takes another kid’s scooter – considering there are 5 developments and maybe a thousand unit and they showed up at the right doorstep to ask for the scooter back I was quite happy with security…
Re dorms, 2 of our previous helpers were a lot more familiar with the dorms than us – and they were the two most “dodgy,” so…………! As in, one somehow accumulated and had stashed all over our apartment some 30 pieces of filled luggage in her 11 months with us and within 40 minutes of being fired out in the hall (didn’t come home all night Sunday, switched off phone and we almost called police thinking something happened to her, showed up 8am monday saying “Before you say anything bear in mind I sued my last 2 employers and won”) had very efficiently moved everything there.
I have aunts. uncles, cousins and a grandma in Bishan – one of their maids who has worked there about a decade had a party in their beautiful house while they were gone. And then it was also burgled. So without repair works and the worry about what else they pick up in the dorm, I would park them there if we were in Singapore yes.
We live in an HDB flat, hardly any security. And don’t forget Singapore has a gadzillion Banglas as transient manual labourers. The Indo maids here favor them a LOT together with the local Malay men. I think its the religious affinity here that gel them together. There was an incident at my area 2 blocks away where an Indo helper fell hopelessly in love with a married local Malay man. Both at fault. She threatened to jump from a high floor when employer found out. And was quickly turned over to her maid agency.
Over at my precinct, I witnessed an Indo helper splaying her legs open in a standing position with a local Malay chap rubbing their croXXXes together. Am practising self censorship here being a child friendly blog. All this happening at the void deck with any passerbys free to watch.
The trouble with Singapore is there are way too many transient labourers both male & female which makes it a very ripe enviornment to develop courtships & illicit relationships. Throw caution to the wind!
I understand that HK has less of the transient labourer situation so less of this nonsense we have in Singapore.
I had forgotten re the laborers in Sing… Yes to my knowledge there’s markedly less here, definitely so in our area… The swanky clubhouse pool table tends to “always” be hogged by all the drivers (I think predominantly from Philly since if they were speaking in Bahasa I can still understand a bit) in the sense that every time we’ve been in the arcade games room they’ve been at the table, and yes I’ve seen helpers playing on the games to the point of ignoring their toddler charges, one of whom I narrowly caught when he fell off a high stool at the game next to mine and Rockstar’s and who then gave me a very sour face when I told her to come and hold her charge…
The problem here is mostly less of the relationships (and I really cringed at your description because what do you tell the kids who walk by??) and more things like the smart helpers know the laws in HK better than the employers in many cases and have been known to aggressively exploit (for e.g. falling down while washing car and sustaining permanent partial loss of vision in left eye, deliberately not pointing out the employer’s reimbursement is not quite right, keeping a file for years because she hopes to eventually bring a civil case against the employer who is a civil servant and whom she hopes will possibly lose her job – this was my friend’s helper who showed my friend the file as a way of telling her never to be rude to her)… I’ve seen them speak up at women’s political forums in the HK universities too…
Miss Rockstar looks happy to be eating her snack.
I believe when a child spends more time with someone else than the mother, the child will naturally loves the person more than the mother even if the person does not purposely make the child love her/him more.
Yes of course. And the action of calling the child’s attention to another child being cuddled (and while the mother is with the child) of course doesn’t fall in this category of purposely or not making the child love them too…