Around and Around and Around We Go...

That seems to be how the Sammi’s Aide Dance goes. Ball of confusion? More like, twirl your partner, dosi-do… We’ve put in a request for a new aide for Samantha, as things just aren’t working out with the current one. I mean, how hard could this possibly be? All we want is someone who’s reliable, nurturing and responsible, who listens and supports the way we are raising our child, and…speaks English. Well. Since I’ve already emphasized it, I’ll go with my last point, to start, before any of you think we’re bad, closed-minded people for not wanting someone who’s foreign. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. We don’t care what ethnicity/nationality/religion an aide is. As a matter of fact, having someone foreign makes things interesting – Samantha could have the opportunity to learn bits of another language, being the little sponge that she is. Our first aide was a very, very sweet woman, but she a) let Samantha walk all over her (ummmm, I’m pretty sure that small children shouldn’t be allowed to try to walk up the stairs in their parents’ shoes, no matter what country you’re from. And, uh, I’m also pretty sure that small children shouldn’t be allowed to play with the cleaning supplies under the sink, even if said children act like they do that sort of thing every day.) and b) didn’t understand much of what we said and wasn’t able to tell us things we probably needed to know (we think she said that Sammi ate playdough, but we were never able to find out how much or if she was choking or any other details about the incident). However, before we could do anything about the work relationship, she announced that she was leaving to go to a different agency (one that had benefits and guaranteed pay). Our current aide (of a totally different nationality) is nice enough, but has a very strong personality. She interrupts us every time we try to give her some instruction about Samantha’s care, saying “I know, I know, I worked with children…blah, blah, blah…” She seriously does NOT listen, has the nerve to try to tell us how we should be doing things with our child, and argues with us when we try to emphasize our points and how we want Samantha to be cared for. Argues!!! Frankly (and understandably), this makes us extremely uncomfortable. And how many times can we instruct her not to feed Samantha anything other than the snacks we’ve left out for her, and only at the time we tell her to? (Er, did that just sound like instructions for Gremlins?) #1, we don’t want to spoil her appetite for dinner at 6pm. #2, we worry about Samantha’s weight. #3, the constipation issue seems to get worse when she eats too many goldfish, so we’ve seriously limited her intake of the yummy little swimmers. What do you mean, you gave her another yogurt? We can barely understand what she’s saying to us, and I’m certain that she doesn’t understand much of what we’re saying to her. Heck, if she can’t understand us, how can she understand what Samantha is saying to her? Steve spoke to her supervisors the other day, and they agreed that they wouldn’t talk to her about it until they have a replacement, since we’d be particularly uncomfortable with her taking care of Sammi in our absence if there was an elephant of that sort hanging over things (did I just mix metaphors?). In the meantime, she does really like Samantha, and the status quo is okay for the short term, but hopefully a new solution will arise soon.