Power, Control, Gender, and Toddlers

How my babysitting gig brings up big grief in my inner child.

I currently babysit three-year-old twins, a girl and a boy, because my brain is too damaged by the abuse of my childhood and marriage to hold the kinds of work I’ve held in the past.

Maybe also because helping to raise children is the most valuable work I have ever known or performed in my life. And because hanging with toddlers connects me to memories of my own children as toddlers and to my own time as a toddler, helping me write my memoir. Which is really my job at the moment. But because it doesn’t pay money and I need money to pay my rent, I need to take on other jobs. I seem to suck at growing paid subscribers here, so my babysitting days currently have no end in sight.

Watching a small girl child navigate the world is triggering in any number of ways. Especially when contrast with watching her male twin navigate the world.

This weird thing h…