Having a housemaid in the home can be a blessing. With someone to do the household chores like mopping the floors, cleaning the bathrooms and kitchen, and doing the ironing, mothers have more time for other things in their lives. They can read, exercise, and spend more time helping their children with homework, playing games with them, and reading stories to them. However, in some cases, the housemaid can become a catastrophe. And that is when the housemaid plays the role of nanny, and even worse, the role of mommy. Nancy, a 29 year old Indonesian housemaid, worked with a family in Dhahran for two years. Her job was to keep the entire house clean, do the laundry and ironing, cook, and take care of two toddlers. “The two boys slept with me in my room. The little one would keep me up until 2 A.M. He would not sleep unless I rocked him all night. I even used to bathe the children myself. I loved them very much, but it was hard to run after them all day and still get the housework done. Their mother was kind, but she rarely spent any time with her boys,” Nancy said. Even if the dangers of such practices do not appear when the kids are little, the damaging effect of having housemaids raise the children will manifest later when the children enter school. n Language The first 3 years of a child's life lay the foundation for his/her language skills. From birth onwards, mother should talk to her baby, point to objects around him and pronounce their names, sing to him, read to him, and engage him in conversation. By his second year, your child should have mastered 50 words and should be able to speak in short sentences. Does a housemaid have the time or interest to continually talk to a babbling 18-month-old? Does a foreign housemaid, more often than not from either non-Arabic non-English countries, speak either Arabic or English clearly and correctly? Of course not. The result is that the children will have poor language and communication skills and will speak in broken words and with an inaccurate accent. n Parent-child relationship The connection between mother and child is like no other. That bond can either be nurtured and strengthened or neglected and weakened. A child's personality will be negatively affected when he/she is left all day and every day with the housemaid. Even working moms can and should find time to spend with their kids when they do get back home. This is a disturbing reality I have witnessed in several schools: a long line of Asian housemaids wait in the school lounge to collect the children after school, rather than the mothers. The first face the child sees after a long day is the housemaid's. On the ride from school to their house, little girls are usually itching to tell practically anyone about their school day: their friends, teachers, how they faced the test, what they learned, what they played during recess, and who bothered them. It should be the mother, not the housemaid, listening to these fervent tales of triumph and sometimes defeat. Children who have an open and strong relationship with their parents at a young age are more likely to listen to their parents' advice and trust them with secrets when they enter teenage. If a five-year-old is used to running to the housemaid for comfort, then when she is 13 and is facing serious problems, she may turn to the housemaid for solace as well. In addition, children who have a deep emotional connection with their parents tend to be more caring and cooperative toward others. Basically, your relationship with your young child shapes her/his personality and character. n Intellectual Development Housemaids who come to this country to work may have had previous training in how to clean and how to operate a vacuum cleaner and washing machine. Most probably they have no training or degrees in how to raise a bright and intelligent child. To be fair, many housemaids take excellent physical care of children: washing, feeding, dressing, carrying, and maybe even putting them to bed. But it is doubtful whether they have the knowledge or the desire to nourish young minds to build successful and competent individuals. Children who receive plenty of mental stimulation at an early age create more links between the neurons in their brains. The more links created in the brain, the greater their learning capacity and mental functions in the future. Children who receive insufficient mental stimulation will lose their natural curiosity and interest to learn. They will show slower mental progress and slower development of cognitive skills. Some fun ways that moms can help in the growth of their young children's minds include: l Singing to them l Reading to them l Coloring with them, even if the only work initially produced is scribbles. l Playing with building blocks. l Fixing simple puzzles. l Splashing and playing with water in the bath. l Rolling a ball back and forth. n Blowing bubbles Amina, an Eritrean housemaid reported, “I worked for a family who had a 1-year-old baby girl. The lady of the house would sleep until noon and would like to wake up to a tidy house, but the baby used to wake up early. So I had to tie a bed sheet around my hips to carry the baby while I worked and have her with me wherever I moved.” Obviously this little girl was not receiving the stimulation she needed to maximize her potential. Most probably, this baby will be labeled in her school years as a slow learner or poor student. n Religion Often families employ a housemaid of a different faith from their own. This can create many problems if the children spend too much time with the housemaid. Anybody who knows anything about child rearing knows that actions speak louder than words and that children learn by imitating the adults in their lives. How can a family expect their child to pray five times a day if she is being brought up by a non-Muslim housemaid? A young child needs to see her mom and dad and older siblings praying in order for him/her to get into the habit of praying. If a child never sees the Holy Qur'an in the hands of his caregiver, then he will not be inclined to read the Qur'an himself. And at least one parent should be available to answer those awkward questions like, “Where is Allah?” and “Why do we have to fast during Ramadan?” n Health Your mom somehow always knows what is good for you, even though she does not have a medical degree. Mothers protect their children's health by making sure the kids eat right, sleep early, and take medications when necessary. When mothers become less active in supervising the family's diet and lifestyle habits, the children's health invariably suffers. On weekends, the loud and crowded food courts at the malls here in Jeddah, and elsewhere in the Kingdom, are filled with tables at which children are eating their meals with the housemaids. Where are the parents? A mother or father can convince their children to order healthy food and to avoid sodas. However, a housemaid does not have the authority or control over the children to tell them what or what not to eat. More and more children are becoming addicted to fried foods and soft drinks, leading to an increase in childhood obesity and diabetes in our society. Urgent situations do arise when mom needs someone to watch her children, for example to go to a doctor's appointment or a relative's wedding. It is only the excessive use of the housemaid as a nanny that our society should condemn. Working moms may have no other choice than to leave their kids in the care of a housemaid. Women who are preoccupied with too many less important activities that keep them away from their children need to re-think their priorities. Greatness is never achieved easily. A great mom is almost always the person behind a great scholar, leader, humanitarian, or warrior. A mother was not granted the grand position in Islam of having the Paradise at her feet for a cheap price. The price is her labor pains, sleepless nights, worries, sweat, tears, time, thoughts, effort, emotions, preaching, and prayers that she put into bringing her children up in the best way possible.
