Au Pairs: She’s Been Lucky--and Loving

When the phone rang at my desk that afternoon, I knew what to expect: the kids, home from school, checking in to report the usual sibling squabbles and homework problems.

But the voice I heard on the other end was choked by sobs. And it was not one of my children crying but their baby sitter--the 20-year-old au pair I’d hired to care for them.

The girls had been awful that afternoon, she said. They were fighting, screaming, running through the house. They wouldn’t listen to her, laughed when she tried to discipline them.

Before she knew it, she’d lashed out and smacked my daughter across the cheek--not hard enough to hurt her but harsh enough to stun them all into silence.

Now she was holding my daughter on her lap, stroking her cheek and crying into the phone. She kept apologizing over and over. And asking me what to do.

*

It scared us, all of us, that out-of-control moment that suggested all that could go wrong with this volatile mix.

A young woman, inexperienced at child care and far away from her family and home. A passel of rambunctious kids, testing, challenging at every turn. An exhausted, overworked mother, desperate to at least imagine a household running smoothly in her absence.

The prosecution and defense presented similar ingredients--in different measures--in Boston, in the case of a young British au pair sentenced Friday to life in prison for murdering an 8-month-old baby in her care.

Prosecutors described for the jury a temperamental teenager who viewed her au pair job primarily as a ticket to Boston’s party scene, a 19-year-old who hated the drudgery of child care and resented her host family’s efforts to curb her late-night social life.

Her anger and frustration reached a crescendo one morning when young Matthew Eappen would not stop crying, prosecutors said. And she shook the baby so violently that she fractured his skull. And he died five days later from a blood clot that formed on his brain.

The defense presented a different picture: a naive young woman from a small town in England who came to America untrained and unprepared for the demands of caring for two small children whose doctor-parents worked all day. A good girl from a loving family who would never intentionally hurt a child.

After three days of deliberation, the jury accepted the prosecution’s view and found the au pair guilty of murder. At the reading of the verdict, the young woman collapsed in sobs. Her parents, in the courtroom behind her, sat stone-faced and ashen.

I am on my fifth au pair in four years, having settled on these “mothers’ helpers” as the best child care I could afford when my husband’s death forced me to work and raise three children alone.

Mine have all come from Sweden, girls in their 20s taking a year off from school to see the world. Unlike the Boston family, I’ve never used an agency, relying instead on newspaper ads, referrals from friends and an au pair network that stretches from here to hometowns in Denmark, Germany, England, France.

One after another, they move into what used to be our guest room, drive what used to be my husband’s car. Their duties are straightforward--pick up the kids from school, help with homework, make dinner, take them to soccer practice, do their laundry.

Our relationship is considerably more complex. They are not like hired help, more like big sisters to my children, teenage daughters--and sometimes friends--to me.

They are free to spend their evenings and weekends as they please. Some, like the now-imprisoned British au pair, stay out all night and sleep late in the mornings. Others take classes, pursue hobbies, spend their weekends at home with us watching videos.

I’ve heard horror stories from other families of girls who lie and steal, who abscond with credit cards and mistreat children, who crash family cars and wreck homes with wild parties.

We’ve been lucky, I guess. Ours have all been delightful girls who were loving and attentive toward my children, honest and sweet.

Still, it has not always been easy. I’ve dealt with pregnancies and depressions, broken hearts and shattered illusions. I’ve hosted their vacationing families and harbored their homeless friends. I’ve lectured and counseled, listened and scolded . . . and I’ve grown to love them, every one.

That same au pair who slapped my child three years ago now works in the L.A. fashion industry and spends Thanksgiving, birthdays and Mother’s Day with our family each year.

I could have sent her packing in anger; she could have run home in disgrace. Instead we talked about what happened, and how to keep it from happening again.

We built a bond that sustained us through future problems and made our peace with the realities of a life that hadn’t turned out quite like either of us had imagined.

It is a hard job caring for children--thankless and confusing, exhilarating but exhausting. And if we’re asking these girls--barely out of childhood themselves--to take on this most awesome task, we must give them more than rules and curfews, a television and a place to sleep.

*

My newest au pair, here just two months, is trying to master English, the freeways and the eccentricities of our family life. This week her mother is with us as well, mainly to check out her daughter’s new home.

Mama speaks only Swedish, but it doesn’t take a shared language to read the love on her face as she bustles about the house, caring for us and her daughter--teaching her daughter to care for mine.

She worries a lot, she confesses one night, as we relax over a bottle of wine, with her daughter translating. There are so many weirdos here, so many dangers, she says. And she cannot protect her child from so far away.

I’m glad I can reassure her that as long as her child is under my roof she is under my protection.

Because there are more children involved here than the ones who are being cared for for pay. There is the child who has traveled far from home. And only if we can be her family can we be sure that she will help ours.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.