Adventure(s) in Baby-Sitting

 -Tyce

For me, one of the scariest things about becoming a foster parent is that I have practically zero experience with small children. I grew up as the youngest child and my cousins were all about the same age. I have two nephews now, but their baby years were while I was still single so I was never called upon to take care of them. When given the opportunity to hold small children I would usually only do so briefly (carefully aiming them away from myself) or decline altogether.

You might think that my years of being a cadet counselor would help, but I don’t take much comfort in it. For one thing, cadets are usually 9 to 14 year-olds which is a completely different set of problems from the infants and toddlers we are getting licensed for. At cadets they are in my charge for only a short period of time and there are always other counselors around. We like to let boys be boys. That means they can roughhouse as long as no one is crying. They can poke the fire with sticks as long as no one is cooking. They can stay up as late as they want as long as they don’t wake me up. They can even take a torch to their derby car as long as it is their car and they do it outside. At cadets, I have come to rely on what I call The Peter Principle: if Dr. Peter is around, and he doesn’t seem to mind the potentially dangerous behavior, then I just let them go and figure Peter can handle any stitches, burns or bone setting. When it comes to us taking care of toddlers at home, however, Dr. Peter is not on call.

Over the past year or so we have developed a closer relationship with a family from church. The parents are our age and they have several children. The youngest just turned six, so we figure that she would be about the same age as the oldest of any children we might be fostering. We have gone camping with them and had a few dinner dates and really enjoy spending time with them. We have been learning a lot about child rearing by watching how they instruct and interact with the children. While we have hung out with other families before, this is the one we have spent the most time with since we made the decision to foster and in the back of my mind has been the constant thought that this could be us, soon.

The parents are leaders of an after-church activity one night a month. While most of them have been canceled due to Covid, it was resuming in January. The question popped into my mind one day: what do they do with the children during this time? Midweek, we set a text asking what they planned to do with the kids. We got an immediate reply — are you offering to babysit? Apparently, they were just discussing that same problem and God used us to solve it.

So over the next few days, questions kept popping into my mind. What do we do about this or that? They usually sing a song with the kids before bedtime — do we do that as well? Will there be enough time after dinner before bed to play a game? What game(s) should I plan on bringing? What do we feed the children? The scene from Despicable Me flashed into my head, where Gru brings the girls home for the first time and has a dog dish full of candy on the floor for them to eat. I had to keep telling myself — it’s only two hours and you are seriously overthinking this.

On Sunday evening after church, we met up with the family. The parents said that they left written instructions, but they both forgot their phones at home so we would not be able to text with questions. For emergencies we could call the other group leaders, but otherwise we were on our own. We got the kids to our car, buckled the youngest in the swanky new car seat, and headed off.

As we pulled into the driveway, we realized that neither of us had remembered to ask for house keys! Fortunately the kids knew what do to and we got inside just fine. The kids ran upstairs to change. I headed into the bathroom to change out of my Sunday suit. When I finished and opened the door, one of the kids was lying on the floor in front of the door.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m lying on the floor.”

“OK” (Is this normal behavior?)

The instructions were on the bar. We made a quick dinner and the oldest did the dishes afterwards. While the oldest did the dishes, I pulled out the card game Blink. It is a fast paced card game of matching shapes, colors and quantities that only takes a few minutes to play a round. I enjoy playing games, and am very competitive, so I usually spend time planning and thinking about what I am doing. This usually leads to a chorus of “you’re taking too long” from everyone with whom I play. While I usually respond “you distracting me will only make me take longer,” this is probably not an appropriate response to a 7 year old. I figured Blink would be a great, short game to play because it will force me to play fast. We only played one round, which I handily won, before Anita announced that it was time for the younger kids to go to bed. (Awwwww, do they have to?)

We knew the bedtime ritual from the previous times that we were over. The kids read a devotional, we sing The Tree Song, and then we pray. After the middle child read the devotional, I announced “Lets sing The Tree Song”. As we started to sing my wife heard the youngest said quietly “But I want to sing {something else}…” and the oldest said “Deal with it” in the way that only loving and kind older brothers do. We sang, I prayed, and we turned out the lights.

It wasn’t until later that my wife said that she thinks the girls pick a different song to sing each night. I said that can’t be: they sang The Tree Song the two previous times that we were over in the evening, as well as at least one night while camping that I had overheard them. As it turns out, the instructions read the girls sing a song. Apparently the girls have a whole repertoire of songs that they pick from, and I have only heard the one because it is the current favorite of the middle child. I, a youngest child myself, have propagated the cruel suffering of doing what the older kids want onto another youngest child. It was a dark day.

The older child is allowed to stay up later, so we headed downstairs to play a few more rounds of Blink. I won the majority of the games, but he did pick it up and manage to hold his own. As he is in Cadets, I used this opportunity while shuffling between games to quiz him on things that he should know for the upcoming Snow Derby. At least one of the boys will be prepared!

While we were playing, the girls came down to say that the youngest cannot sleep and misses mommy. There were tears. Anita consoled her and gave her a hug. She promised that mom would be home soon and would check in on her right away when she got home. She took the girls back upstairs to bed and got them all tucked in again.

We sent the older child to bed at his bedtime and had a few minutes of quiet relaxation. Then the middle child came down because she cannot sleep. There were no tears this time around, but she looked so sad that my heart just broke. Anita then consoled her, and asked if she wanted to read a story book. She said yes and found one. We sat on the couch together and read it. Afterwards we promised that mom would be home soon (really any time now) and she would come and check on them.

About five minutes after she went to bed, mom and dad came home. Immediately the older two were out of bed and downstairs hugging their parents. (The youngest was asleep.) The parents explained that because of Covid, they have not had any need for babysitting recently, and nobody else has put their kids to bed for probably a year. We chatted for a few minutes and assured them that the children had behaved themselves perfectly. We reminded mom to check up on the youngest, and left for home.

On the way home, we got to thinking. These kids were going to sleep in their own beds, being supervised by people they know and trust, and secure in the knowledge that their parents were only at church and would be home within an hour. They still were worried and scared. How much scarier will it be for our foster children, who will have been torn away from their home, placed with strangers, and have no idea when they will see their folks again?

Lord, grant them comfort.