Infant Industry: The Hippest Babysitter in America
Meet Ryan the Manny.
by Ada Calhoun
February 12, 2007
They wouldn't say that in Minnesota.
Oh my God! No! It was just so nice to see a parent accepting her child for who he is. You see the kids here have so much more confidence. People my age from the Midwest have issues. At twenty-four, I feel like I've tackled most of them. But here, stuff is just accepted more by parents. And it's really nice.
What's your social life like? Do you have a girlfriend?
No, I don't have a girlfriend, because I'm gay. That's another thing. In Minnesota, if parents knew I was gay, I wouldn't be babysitting their kids. Most of my parents now know and don't care. I don't ever talk to my kids about it, obviously, not that I think they would care, because they're, like, four. But I'm still awkward about it, even though the families that do know are so great about it. Like, I'm really close to my ex-boyfriend and he's in the hospital recovering from cancer and they ask me about him all the time. It's really nice.
Do you have any babysitting horror stories?
I had this one little girl who's three years old. She wanted to watch a movie. I don't let my kids watch movies all that often. I'd rather be creative with them. But I was like, "Okay, you can watch it for ten or fifteen minutes." So, we're watching Little Bear or
something like that. And she takes her shirt off and is in her underwear. That's not unusual for little girls, but as a guy I feel like I have to be really careful. I have to be smart about things. And I said, "Okay, let's put our clothes back on." And she said, "No! I don't wanna!" And then she took her underwear off and I was all, "Uhh . . ." Because I don't want to make her think it's bad to be naked, but I also want her to put her clothes back on. So I'm thinking, "Be clever, Ryan." Nothing was working. And then she got up on the ledge of the couch and started humping it. I called up my friend Jamie, who's a nanny for some girls up by Central Park, and I said, "What do I do?!" And she said, "Oh, my girls do that sometimes. They're just curious and exploring." And I said, "I know that. But I'm a male babysitter." She said, "Just talk to her." By now, the girl had moved up to the upper part of the couch and was really getting into it. And I said to her, "What are you doing?" And she said, "I don't know, but I can't stop!" I said, "Fair enough," and I made sure she wasn't going to fall off and I left the room. Eventually, she got down and put her clothes back on. When her mother came home, I told her what had happened. And her mother said, "Oh, she does that all the time!"
Do you play guitar for your kids?
I'd like to, but we're always at the playground so it's hard to lug a guitar around. We do a lot of coloring and playing pretend. The most popular game is Green Goblin, where I'm Green Goblin and run around chasing them. That's their favorite. We draw with chalk on the sidewalk. A lot of kids are really into war games. We go through the trees and play Safari. They like to play Cats. One of the kids I have likes to put on acrobatic shows.
Do you notice that other nannies are less interactive?
You know what? Yes! In the summer, I'll have eight four-year-olds hanging on me. And the other nannies are all sitting on the bench watching. I'm like, I'm doing your job for you.
You could report them to ISawYourNanny.
What's that, a place you can tell on bad nannies? How funny. Yeah, I don't think I'd be on there.
photo courtesy Nicole Marie Polec
©2006 Ada Calhoun and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Ada Calhoun was Babble's founding editor-in-chief. She has been a theater critic at New York magazine, an AOL News blogger and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. She has written for Time, Salon.com and The New York Times Arts & Leisure. Her first book, Instinctive Parenting, will be published by Simon Spotlight in 2010. Visit adacalhoun.com. |
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