I am grateful that there are people who are caring, kind, and trustworthy enough to care for my kids when I cannot. I have, over the past eight years, availed myself of daycare centers, preschools, teenage babysitters and mother’s helpers, and numerous friends. Almost without exception, I have been impressed by how much these non-familial caregivers seemed to care for my kids. Above and beyond their safety, I mean. These women (for it has been exclusively women) showed a reasurring degree of affection for my kids.

This morning, I finally admitted to myself that caring for other people’s kids… well, it makes me a little uncomfortable. I like kids, and I like the kids I have been called upon to care for from time to time. But it’s hard for me because I feel a tad… like it’s too initmate. Caring for young kids is so physical – from hand washing to bum wiping, from a cuddle after a spill in the driveway to a runny nose. I’m ok doing these things for some else’s kids — I’m gentle and kind, loving and patient – but it never feels quite natural, even though doing it for my own kids is akin to caring for myself.

Maybe that’s it. Kids who are not mine are not of me. Maybe on some weird biological level, my primal instinct recognizes that these kids are the offspring of a different tribe. After all, my nephew and neices absolutely fall into the category of “my kids”. They’re family.

I suppose it’s the same impulse that allows you, as a parent, to wipe up or be doused in whatever assorted and at times unrecognizable nastiness is emitted from your offspring, all without batting an eyelash. There is a familial continuum.

Am I weird to feel this slight distance, this small physical unease when caring for kids who are not my own? I suppose as the mom of a five-year old who is not yet toliet-trained, I have no place to say these things. But that only makes me all the more grateful for the excellent people who care for Davey.