{"id":11425,"date":"2015-11-04T10:12:22","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T16:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/?p=11425"},"modified":"2016-04-20T12:39:58","modified_gmt":"2016-04-20T18:39:58","slug":"11425","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/2015\/11\/11425\/","title":{"rendered":"To the Rescue with Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I am\u00a0in charge of a funeral luncheon and there are\u00a0several sisters in poor\u00a0health in my congregation. I was trying to think of how to meet so many needs\u00a0and I remembered this adventure from my memoir project. I’m grateful that our children are old enough to take care of themselves this week!<\/p>\n

To the Rescue with Children, 2003<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>
2003<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our phone rang almost all of the time during the years that I served as the president of the Relief Society in my church in Austin. On this day in 2003,\u00a0the call was from a woman who needed me to pick up her son from school because he was sick. She was a bus ride away from home and had no way to pick him up. Her son\u00a0lived with many disabilities\u00a0and I was on the list of people who\u00a0had permission\u00a0to pick him up from school.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I looked down at my three young children, ages a few months to age 6. How was I going to pick up\u00a0this boy\u00a0with all of these kids in tow? I had many people who helped watch the children during these years, but finding a sitter wasn\u2019t always possible. Today I didn\u2019t have time to call around for help; the boy\u00a0needed to be picked up right away. I loaded the kids into the van and drove to the high school.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It was a cool, blank-skied Texas spring afternoon with some rain. My mind dashed among\u00a0the incompatible players in this\u00a0situation. Should I bring the kids into the school? I couldn\u2019t believe that this was a good idea. I needed both of my hands to help the boy to the car.\u00a0What if he\u00a0was angry and unwilling to come with me? I tried to shield my children from a lot of the anger and grief I saw\u00a0as I did my Relief Society work. The cool rain gently spattered the windshield as I pulled into the school, still with no solution.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I looked at my children in the rear view mirror and spied a blanket in the back seat. As I gathered up baby Timothy I told Paige and Daniel, ages six and three to hide under the blanket while I was gone. I didn\u2019t want anyone to notice the abandoned children in our van. This was not a smart solution. But it was all I could do. Any other solution would have meant leaving them alone for a longer period of time. I didn’t worry about their safety as much as what people might think if they saw them. I became a mother in the early years of the attachment parenting movement which evolved into helicopter parenting. The cultural reflex to judge a parent harshly when children are seen alone, even in a cool car with its doors locked, caused me more angst\u00a0than was helpful for the kids.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Those ten minutes while I collected the boy from school\u00a0were filled with guilt and frustration. I was relieved that he didn’t need to be coaxed into coming\u00a0with me because he was interested in the baby\u00a0I had tied against me in a sling.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My children probably remember my work with this family because I would abandon them to do it. \u201cPlay in this tree while I go inside this house, kids,\u201d and, \u201cHide under this blanket while I go and fetch this boy from the high school,\u201d and \u201cHave fun with Grandma and Dad while I go for a visit!\u201d I hope that I was able to frame these maneuvers as adventures to them.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I am\u00a0in charge of a funeral luncheon and there are\u00a0several sisters in poor\u00a0health in my congregation. I was trying to think of how to meet so many needs\u00a0and I remembered this adventure from my memoir project. I’m grateful that our children are old enough to take care of themselves this week! To the … Continue reading To the Rescue with Children<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,20,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angies-memoir-project","category-life-according-to-angela","category-motherhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11425"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11574,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11425\/revisions\/11574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}