Life, LOL-berty, and The Pursuit of Happiness

As a little girl, I spent endless hours acting out stories with my Barbie dolls. With working parents, and sisters who were old enough to avoid hiring a sitter (but who never gave me the time of day) my childhood life was often solitary. When I was at home, it was just me and my dolls.

As a nanny, I have spent endless hours acting out stories and scenarios with Coco- who is basically a six year old version of me. Only instead of Barbies- she’s obsessed with LOL dolls.

While we’ve shared plenty of giggles just making the dolls talk to each other and go on adventures, my favorite pandemic activity has been building an LOL universe.

You should know that Coco has been asking her parents for the LOL Chalet Ski Resort for years; I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that it comes with a hefty price tag or that it takes up half a room, but it has been on every list for as long as I can remember. The LOL Chalet has been the crowning glory of Coco’s Birthday list, Xmas list, and it’s conveniently earmarked in the Target toy catalog that no one dares to throw away.

Well, Coco’s 7th birthday is coming up and guess what did NOT make it onto her birthday list?!

That’s right — I think I’ve finally made her forget about the *whisper-LOL-CHALET-whisper* with the array of projects we’ve made.

Highlights of our catalog of projects include *drumroll-please* a working movie theatre that seats all of her dolls and has a place to screen films from her iPad, a unicorn-shaped clubhouse, a two story tiny-home, and the statue of LOL-berty.

As a self proclaimed “maker” I have taken pride in the craftsmanship of many of these projects, but I’ve also learned some incredibly valuable lessons. As much as Coco and I have enjoyed playing with these awesome structures, the pride she has for having been a part of building them brings me so much joy.

When we started crafting together, I’d take on the bulk of the projects, wanting them to be perfect and functional, but soon I started to see her as the capable human that she is and it changed the way I work as a nanny. Seeing how valuable it is to let her do her share of the work (even if it means a corner might not be cut the way I would have done it or that the marbling technique on the paint wasn’t what I had in mind) has been nothing short of transformational for both of us.

To be fair, at the beginning of the pandemic, Coco was more likely to run with scissors than to be able to hold them correctly. It’s easy, as a caregiver, to choose to take the scissors away and do the work myself, and sometimes it’s necessary! But when we got out of the exhausting routine of rushing to after school extracurriculars and finally had more time than we knew what to do with, my approach changed, and I’m so glad it did.

When I let Coco take on more, the quality of her work immediately blossomed. She began to create things more independently and with innovation. I’d arrive on Monday morning and she’d have built a piece of tiny furniture on her own. One morning I showed up and she’d built her dolls a bathroom!

Crafting with Coco has taught me to let go of control and perfectionism, and to truly enjoy working in collaboration! I’d like to think this has healed some of the wounds of past projects - you know, the ones junior high school teachers seem to be obsessed with. They’re great in theory, until the bullied kid ends up doing all the work and getting none of the credit.

In my professional life as a writer and performing artist, I have rarely been drawn to collaborative work. And when I have worked in groups, something has often interfered with me getting the joy I would have felt if I had just worked alone. But after spending these last 15 months engaged in a plethora of group projects with Coco, my whole outlook has changed.

Sometimes (in the world of crafting) things don’t go our way. Boy did I have high hopes for some of our projects- and while many of them came out beautiful, most had a few moments of, “oops... how are we going to fix that?”

But the real aha moment was recently, when we were almost finished with our LOL movie theater: I wanted to paint the outside a particular way and Coco had her own plan.

Now let me set the scene by telling you outright- her way was not effective.

Side note: this is a brilliant kid - not even just speaking from my biased opinion. Like... this child isn’t just extra, she is extraordinary. But she’s also still six.

Part of my strength as a nanny has always been meeting my nanny kids in every moment as a person and not just as a little kid, but let me tell ya, the way this little kid wanted to paint was not going to look good and we had just spent several days working on this project! (And between the paint, the stick on wallpaper, and other materials, it had cost $20+ and I didn’t want to ruin it.)

So I pushed back a bit and it.didn’t.go.well. I demonstrated my technique on a tiny corner of the area we were about to paint. Suffice it to say that Coco, who is usually my #1 fan, was not happy with me. While I was forgiven for my bossy takeover a few minutes later, and while I may have actually done the “right thing” by some standards, unfortunately, Coco would not agree. There were some tears. (Coco wasn’t happy either.)

We got through that moment, and yes, we ultimately painted it my way. BUT the next day, when we worked on a different part of the movie theater, I said yes to every one of Coco’s ideas.

Teamwork is an art, and there are no mistakes in art- except for not listening to one another.

As an improviser, the first lesson we are taught is “yes, and” so it’s funny how, when most people talk about children, the overarching theme is, “yes, but.”

Out in the world I see the way people fail to listen to kids or treat them like human beings. It’s dangerous. It’s foolish. And it’s sad. After 15 months of being separated from what I once knew to be my social life, my nanny kids have become my dearest friends. They are full-humans and not little toys meant to sit on shelves and be seen and not heard.

While they have less life experience, they bring a certain magic to the table, and I’m thankful to be even more open to listening for their magic and helping them learn to incorporate it into all of our projects.