Here’s something I wish I had figured out sooner:
I can ask a friend to host my children for a morning and offer to host her children for a morning the following week (or vice versa).
I refer to this as the “kid swap.”
This is not the only option of its kind. I could ask to leave my kids with a friend or a neighbor or a family member without the “exchange” element. I could also pay someone to take care of my children. I’m captain of that team, and I could go on and on about the community building value of paying people to watch my children. And yet, utilizing any of these options makes me feel like I’m cheating. What I’m trying to say is that it’s worthwhile to push past that “cheater cheater pumpkin eater” feeling, not only because it’s bogus, but also because these options are beneficial for everyone involved.
On a swap day, I was wandering around my empty house when I got a text from the friend watching the kids. All it said was, “8 < 5.”
This text was code for: “Our combined eight children scattered to the far corners of the house the minute you walked out the door and have been playing happily ever since—I’m drinking coffee at my kitchen table alone.” Our families have ten children total—not sure where two of those kids were that day— but on that occasion and others, we have observed the “more is less” phenomenon that occurs when we kid swap.
You really don’t need to overthink this, you can just go and do it, right now. But here are some additional “nuts and bolts” thoughts about the swap.
Proximity helps. The closer the swap houses are, the better.
The children do not have to be exactly the same age, but previous familiarity is a bonus.
Stealth mode is the best mode. When I’m watching the kids on swap day, I like to employ a style I call “Submarine Parenting.” I am available in case of emergencies but I’m not going to interfere, except to check on the activities via periscope. I’m thinking of renaming this strategy “Beekeeper Childcare,”1 because one of the best things a beekeeper can do is leave the bees alone. Instead of monitoring the hive’s progress continually, the beekeepers approach the hives once a week, loaded with sugar water. After refreshing the bees’ food supply and making sure nothing is grievously awry, they put the lid back on the hive and leave. Takeaway: don’t interrupt playtime, unless there’s a crisis or you are bringing them juice.
Don’t insist on productivity. It’s tempting to think: “I will get SO MUCH done while the kids aren’t here.” But there are only sixty seconds in a minute. You might not get any further along on the list than you would have anyway. And maybe you have more important things to do than “getting so much done.”
Maybe you need to go for a walk.
Maybe you need to sit in a coffee shop and watch the rain.
Maybe you need to stay home and read five chapters of a novel.
Maybe you need a shower and a nap.
Maybe you need to burst into tears.
And maybe your friend needs to get something done while your kids are at her house.
Exhibit A:
in other news…
Eucharistic Saints comes out this month!
Eucharistic Saints is a great option for a First Communion gift, or for the family to read together during these years of Eucharistic Revival. I’d be honored if you checked it out (TAN often has good sales, and I will give updates on that as becomes relevant). My goal with these stories was to create some “Saint scenes” for children and families, stories that focus on one significant moment. Each (short) story is told by a “bystander,” so we can marvel at the Saint with them—and also because I tried third person narration from the Saint’s perspective and…
“Wow, that’s brilliant,” thought Thomas Aquinas, “I’d better write that down.”
Well. I just couldn’t get it to work. But I like the “bystander” effect, and I’m hoping some kids and families will, too. Here’s a preview of a whole story from the website (if that doesn’t open you can just go to the website and click “Sneak Peek”).
The writing and editing I do for my part-time job sometimes happens after bedtime and during naptime, but mostly it happens while my kids are somewhere else: at Gigi’s, or at Grandma’s, or at a friend’s house, or at gym daycare, or at preschool camp, or at preschool, or at school… or while I’m somewhere else, and a babysitter is helping them build blanket forts on the bunk bed. The content for A Saint A Day was written during Fall 2020, when three wonderful teens from the parish had exceptionally weird daytime school schedules. I would not be able to create anything unless there were other places my kids could be and other people who loved them well (I’m looking at you, N. of the YMCA Learn n’ Play crew, the only person on planet Earth who can get my baby to take a bottle—you are the best).
I didn't know there was an antonym of "helicopter mom". psyched for your book.
Here’s to me banking on this strategy working when we move 😉. I do think there’s something magical about the slight novelty of new people and close proximity. Even when our neighbor comes to play outside for the two hours before dinner, I’m spared the ceaseless snack requests and it’s just so lovely.