9:00

The caseworker is coming tomorrow morning at 9.

Thanks to everybody for the support and concern. It appears almost certain that the call came from the wild-eyed neighbor lady, though CPS can't confirm that. I called the police department to see if they might have initiated the CPS contact, and the woman I spoke with said there was absolutely nothing in the report to indicate that any follow-up was deemed necessary.

I have been thinking all evening about the recommendations that I take down the posts on the topic, but I'm not going to do that at this point. I am not ashamed of anything I have done or said in this situation. I acknowledge freely that I made a decision that wouldn't fly in many American neighborhoods these days, but here's the thing: it flies in this one. In this little section of Gladlyville, parents allow their kids to walk a quarter-mile alone. In fact, I keep my kids on a shorter tether than several of my neighbors do. If this woman has a problem with that aspect of neighborhood culture, she's got her work cut out for her. She can be a busybody and a bully here in the neighborhood if she so chooses (about which more below), but she doesn't get to call the shots here on my blog. My pseudonymous blog, for Pete's sake, where you'd have to do some digging to figure out which one of five or six states I even live in.

I also acknowledge freely that Joe didn't demonstrate good traffic safety skills when he crossed the street. We have since talked about it repeatedly, and he's had multiple opportunities in the past five days to show me that he knows how to cross the street safely. (We walk a lot.) But you know, if it was the responsibility of CPS to come down on every parent in this town -- or even in this neighborhood -- whose child was permitted to walk alone a quarter-mile from home despite intermittently suboptimal traffic safety skills -- let's just say they'd need quite the budget boost for that. I'll be looking for that to happen when I see the garbage guys wearing tuxedos to work instead of their municipal-issue grubbies.

Working in early intervention, I see a fair amount of borderline parenting. In fact, ironically, I stopped at home between therapy sessions this morning to check in. My oldest said, "Mom, really bad news," and handed me the caseworker's card. I drove the 5 minutes to my next appointment and did therapy on autopilot, shaking the whole time. I wish I could list for you the assortment of less-than-ideal choices on display there, but it would be both uncharitable and a HIPAA violation. Let me just say that there's a whole lot more for a caseworker to chew on there than here, and yet I would never report this family. They're doing the best they can with what they've got. Aren't we all, mostly?

Tomorrow morning I plan to invite this caseworker, a youngish-sounding man who spends a lot of time with families more troubled than mine, into my reasonably clean and tidy home and offer him a carrot muffin. (Why, yes, I do serve my children vegetables for breakfast in their homemade whole-grain muffins, because I'm negligent like that.) I am fairly certain that he can talk to Joe for five or ten minutes (Joe says he was "this mad" (hands six inches apart) at me on Friday and "this mad" (arms extended as far as they go, all the way behind his back) at the neighbor who forbade him to go home), and to me for fifteen or twenty, and figure out that I am not a negligent parent and that I am more than willing to re-evaluate any choices CPS would consider problematic.

If at any point I get a different vibe from this guy than I got on the phone, I can tell him I'd like to wrap up our discussion and talk with a lawyer before we continue. If you come back tomorrow and the relevant posts are gone, you can infer that it went badly. But if you are a pray-er, I'd really appreciate your prayers for our meeting. I am hoping I can write one more post about the situation, one called "Unfounded," and be done with this mess.

One question that I can't resolve tomorrow is what to do about this neighbor. The woman at the police station encouraged me to come in and leave a statement about how she treated Joe, which would then be appended to the report from Friday. I plan to ask while I'm there about the legality of physically restraining a child who has said repeatedly that he wants to go home, that he knows how to go home, that he was told to go home. If, as I suspect, there is a legal issue (or twelve) with her behavior, I will talk to the police about my options. Send a registered letter advising her of same? Ask a lawyer to write a letter? Or just teach the kids to steer well clear of her? What would Jesus do with a crazy neighbor who reported him to the police and then to CPS when the police politely dismissed her concerns? I really don't know.

This post may sound calm, but it is coming at the end of a not-at-all calm day. My arrhythmia was crazy all day long, until it finally dawned on me that I could take a beta-blocker even if I wasn't planning to exercise. (Good news, btw: the dose I take appears to have no effect at all on baby's heartrate.) In the afternoon, I had contraction after contraction after contraction after contraction, every 3-5 minutes until I thought, "If this doesn't stop right now, I need to think about going to the ER and getting checked out" -- and then at last it stopped.

I thought about putting that in my hypothetical registered letter as well: "...the stress induced by your unwarranted and intrusive call to CPS caused significant exacerbation of a cardiac arrhythmia as well as symptoms of preterm labor in a previously uneventful pregnancy. If you harass my family further, I will hold you personally liable for any untoward stress-related outcomes." I'm pretty sure Jesus wouldn't do that, though. So discuss: how do you love thy neighbor (probably that should be "how dost thou love" -- yes?) when thy neighbor's apparent intent is to stir up trouble for thy family?