Becoming an Au Pair in Spain When I Disliked Kids – Travellers’ Tales

This is a guest post, as part of the ‘Travellers’ Tales’ series, which is an open platform for travellers around the world to share their memorable experiences, stories, and learnings from their journeys. In this edition, Amy Aed from Wandering Everywhere recounts her experience of becoming an au pair in Spain. If you have a story to share, simply email your text along with pictures and a short bio to [email protected].

 

I’m not going to lie to you – I’ve never been particularly great with kids. Nay, I really dislike them. Whilst my friends are tagging themselves in cute Insta photos of newborns, I fight the urge to gag. I simply don’t understand the obsession.

So, I hear you ask, why the living hell did I sign up to become an au-pair – a profession where you live with complete strangers, often for months on end, caring for the nightmare children the parents find too difficult to take care of themselves?

 

Well, simply: boredom, and desperation.

 

I knew once I finished my first year of university that I would have a whole summer stretching out before me, of which I wanted to try and fill with super exciting adventures. When I got rejected as a hotel representative and accepted as one of those girls that hand out Vodkas in nightclubs in Ibiza (something I would be truly horrendous bad at), I sent off an application to become an au-pair.

When I found out that, against all odds, I had been accepted, the realisation of just “oh, shit,” dawned upon me. What was I meant to do now? I Skyped my potential host family and was exceedingly relieved to find that the kids were aged seven and 12, meaning that there would be no nappy-changing, no burping, and no strangers assuming that the infant belonged to me. It sounded like maybe everything would be okay.

As I booked the flights to Spain, I was still dubious that any of it would actually fall into plan. But then I went on a quick trip to Alicante for the worst holiday of my life and ended up exceedingly relieved when my host family finally came to pick me up and take me to Valencia. How hard could it be, anyway?

It only took three days for the family to try to fire me.

They told me that they saw no connection between me and their children and that they weren’t sure how much responsibility I could actually summon. I, however, insisted that I was perfect for the job and that the kids would have the best summer of their lives. Honestly, I just didn’t want to give up on my free holiday so early.

After two weeks in a beautiful seaside villa in Valencia, where we spent days exploring neighbouring towns and getting ice-cream on the beach (I think I spent around six hours in total with just the kids over the span of said two weeks, in all honesty), we all drove to Madrid so that the parents could go back to work. This is where the real work started.

 

 

It was so much harder than I thought. The children were so hard to take care of, with the daughter deciding from the get-go that she absolutely despised my guts, and the son refusing to listen to anything I had to say. It was a weird set-up and for the first few weeks, we all simply tolerated each other, living in absolute denial that either one of us existed.

 

Days were spent with me trying to coax the children out of bed (the father was very strict that we should all wake up before 10 am – however, failed to mention that it would take at least 15 attempts every morning to get them to move, and only then when sprayed with water), and then mainly comprised of us all lounging in front of the TV, where I wouldn’t understand a single word because it was all in Spanish. 

Eventually, I took them on a trip to the local pool, where the daughter and I actually bonded for the first time. When she showed an interest in what was happening around her and actually paid me attention, she could be really fun to hang out with. However, the second we stepped back indoors she retreated back to her bedroom and blanked out the concept that anyone else existed. It was strange. From there, I decided to take them to the pool several days a week, and with each time, the children and I started working on actually becoming friends. 

Whilst I was trying to get along with the kids, I found myself slowly becoming an ingrained part of the family. I would go to the birthdays of cousins and went on fancy meals out with the grandparents. Having never been a part of a close-knit family like this, it was nice to fully immerse myself in a world of support and strength, and family values.

 

I had to abstain from calling the dad’s mother my own “Abuela” – we got so close.

 

Slowly, I began to really get along with the children. I called the daughter out when she lied, and when I discovered that we both loved the baking show “Sugar Rush” on Netflix, I bought an abundance of ingredients so that we could bake together. I began to understand that the boy had a really short attention span, hence why he would never listen to anything I said. I learnt how to do his daily assigned homework in smaller blocks of time so that he wouldn’t have an anger fit, and it actually all started to work out.

 

Over the next few months, we began to really become friends with each other.

 

We would go to the pool, skate park, river, basketball court, football fields. We even went on little cross-country adventures together. By the end of it, I found myself really caring for the two little nuisances. By the end of it, I was almost like a big sister.

When it was time for me to finally leave my temporary Spanish family, we were all pretty heartbroken. I gave the kids some cute presents to remember me by, and in return, they gave me the biggest hugs. My host father even had to hold back the tears. 

When I arrived back in England, I reflected on my time spent away from home and volunteered to take the children in my own family out on day trips with me for the first time. I ended up feeling very glad that I signed up to become an au-pair, even despite the fact that I hated kids. It taught me so much, and I gained more than I could ever have hoped for. 

Would I recommend au-pairing, even to people that want to flee the second a kid enters the room? Yes. A hundred times over, yes.

 

More about the author:

 Amy Aed is the editor behind the travel blog Wandering Everywhere – a site dedicated to solo and female travel, travel with Crohn’s Disease, and comprehensive guides on gorgeous places. Amy is a self-proclaimed ‘tea addict’ on a mission to document the most beautiful, genuine, and exciting places that the world has to offer. She has been featured in Wanderlust Magazine, The Mighty, Able Magazine, and more. Connect with her on Instagram or Twitter.

 

 

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