[Junerain]

I've been working with children for sixteen years now, I've reached a point where I do love my job at my current daycare, but they are only offering three hours of work a day. I do have to watch what I earn, I'm on disability, so I can't find another job unless it's extremely part time. I feel to grow as a person, I'd like to apply to be an Au Pair, a nanny who works in a live-in situation, in another city. This is a huge change- I have really close friends here in my hometown, I've never lived anywhere else, save a few months at an out of state college, before I transferred home, due to mental breakdown. But I'm older now, I think I could handle it..that happened when I was nineteen, now I'm forty-three. I sincerely love children so, so much, am happiest when I'm caring for them. Thoughts?

[Skeezyks]

Hello Junerain: Kudos to you for wanting to spread your wings! I've never worked as an au pair. So I can't share any experiences related to doing that type of work. But my thinking here is certainly go ahead & apply. See what comes up. You can always turn it down if the particular situation seems wrong. But realize what a huge change this is going to be!

I recall, years ago, reading a list of major life events that can cause upheaval in a person's life. Two of them were, as I recall, changing jobs & making a major move. You'd be doing both at the same time. Plus, as an au pair, you'd be living in a stranger's home. This could end up turning into a "perfect storm" as we like to say nowadays. That's not to say you shouldn't do it. But realize what you are potentially getting into. And try to prepare for it as much as possible ahead of time. Unfortunately though, I'm afraid, there's only going to be so much you can do to pre-prepare. And that's where the difficulty is going to come in. "The devil is in the details," as the saying goes. On the other hand, there is another saying I am fond of as well. It comes from the Buddhist tradition. (I like sayings...) It is: "Walk toward what scares you."

P.S. One thought would be, if you could arrange it, see if you could take some time off from your current job (so you could go back if you wanted to) & then see if you could find a short-term temporary au pair position somewhere that would allow you to try this type of work situation out in order to see if it really is something you'd want to do long-term. Imagining what doing this type of work might be like is one thing. Actually doing it may turn out to be something else again.