Youngest and Oldest Kids: Adventures of the Chongqing Nanny

I get along well with youngest children; most of my best friends and men I've been out with are youngest kids. I'm an oldest, so perhaps it's just an easy paradigm to fall into. My second year, most of the new volunteers assigned to Chongqing were guys. (New volunteers arrive every July; because we serve for two years, you serve with a different group your first and second years.) And almost all of them were youngest children.

Because I'd already been in Chongqing a year when the new volunteers arrived, I was happy to take on the role of 411 if they needed it. I told them about getting around the city and food and shopping and whatever else they needed to know. But then I started getting calls from restaurants, asking me to talk to their server to order their dinner. One of the girls sometimes called me and she was always "Hey, can you help me out? I've tried and it's not working." But the boys were like, "Hi, order my food, 'k thanks bye." I started to get annoyed by the boys. I started to feel like I wasn't their friend, I was their nanny. On the one hand, it was flattering they thought I knew so much. On the other hand, I'm not your mom. It's funny now to me how easy it was for us to fall into this pattern, because both sides were willing to take on the role of youngest/oldest. (Yes, I am stereotyping-- not all youngest or oldest kids act like this. But we did.)

I finally told them I felt like their nanny, not their friend, and I didn't like that. They started making an effort to make sure they knew I was their friend first, nanny second (haha), balance restored. Even now I sometimes still get emails asking for help with something Chongqing-related. I'm happy to help out. And they taught me more about being very laid-back, carefree and fun-loving. Youngest and oldest: it's a dynamic that works.

Happy Halloween! Hope you have a great time. Be safe! Here's a picture from last year I don't think I've shared before. He didn't know what to be for Halloween, so like a good nanny I took him in at the last minute, gave him my Chinese silk dragon robe, cut off the sleeves of this t-shirt, blew dry his just-washed gym shorts with my hair-dryer and gave him a (make-up based) black eye. I also taped up his hands but it disappeared by the time this picture was taken. I had to rush him past the guards outside my apartment because at the time they were still housing swine flu quarantinees in my building. But look at him: would YOU mess with this boxer? I still love the memory of us trying to get a taxi in our Halloween getups. Crazy Americans.