An Unintended Workout

I wrote the post that follows and then was besieged by second thoughts about putting it up for all to read. Should I admit that my 8yo climbs trees without direct supervision? Is it good enough to be within shouting distance? Could this be interpreted as further evidence of negligence? I got a worried email saying I had taken a risk by posting that I'd taken the train to Chicago. For anyone else who wondered, there are nine Midwestern states from which a person could take a morning train that gets her to Chicago in time to hit the Art Institute and a concert. (I did think about that before I posted my agenda for the weekend. I am not cautious enough to take down posts without a clear indication, but I am cautious enough to spend 15 minutes looking at Amtrak timetables and googling college towns.)

I'm not going to let this CPS nonsense run my life, though. I am never going to be the kind of mother whose kids get their exercise on the elliptical trainer in the basement (bicycle helmets securely fastened, because you know elliptical trainers can be dangerous). My kids are going to climb trees if they want to, with diminishing supervision as they learn what they're doing, and they're going to spend time outside in accordance with neighborhood norms until I have good reason to re-evaluate those norms. So here's what happened:

Last summer Joe dug in his heels about riding his bike without training wheels. He said, "I know how to do it. I just don't like to. I prefer my scooter." This was patently untrue, but I wasn't in a rush if he wasn't in a rush.

Today I said, "You know what? You could learn to ride that bike in about ten minutes. Want to try?" He was agreeable and so off we went. We noodled around in front of the house for a few minutes, and then headed around our little block. Pete was riding his trike on the sidewalk around our house, and Alex was right there in case Pete needed anything. Marty was up in our tree, but I wasn't worried about him in the slightest. He has named every branch of that tree, and in all the time he's spent climbing I don't recall that he's ever run into trouble. Our block is small enough that I can hear a shout for help from any point on the way around it.

You know where this is heading, right?

I was almost all the way around, about twenty yards from home, when I heard the screaming. I got Joe safely stopped, told him to follow me on foot (there I go again!), and ran for it. "Dear God," I prayed, "please don't let him have broken his arm while there's an open CPS investigation into our family." Then I caught sight of Marty dangling from a branch. He wasn't hurt, just terrified. He'd been walking along a big branch that broke off unexpectedly, leaving him hanging.

The solution was obvious: I put both hands on the back fence and jumped over it into the neighbor's yard. "Okay, sweetie," I called up to him, "you can let go now." He dropped safely into my arms and I hugged him for a minute while his breathing slowed down. He scrambled over the fence into our yard. Alex said, "Sorry, Mom, I panicked for a minute."

I tried to get back over the fence myself and realized that the sucker is almost shoulder-high. How was I going to get my 21-week belly back into its own yard? Let's just say my performance wouldn't qualify me for any parallel bars competitions. Then I thought, "Marty is a pretty skinny kid but he still weighs 60 pounds. I would not have been so blithe about catching a 60-pound anything under normal circumstances." Thank goodness for adrenaline, and for guardian angels.

Joe's response to the crisis: "Mom, please can you run around the block with me some more?"

***

I had hoped to have a CPS update today but I don't -- I called several times and never got to speak with the caseworker. I did include some detail here that might have belonged in a post of its own. Yesterday Joe and I went to the police station and spoke with the officer who responded to the incident. He took my statement about the woman's restraining Joe, so there's an official record of that now, appended to his original report. I asked him about the best way to make sure, without escalating the situation, that she does not touch my children again, and he said he would contact her himself to make sure she knows to leave my kids alone. He was very reassuring -- very clear that my decision made sense to him while also helping me to view her more charitably -- and I am optimistic that he can get the point across if anyone can. So that's good. Still praying...

Comments

[Stephen]

Hooray for climbing trees!

A couple of years ago I was hanging out in a tree outside my office at school. The window to my office opened and another grad student stuck his head out. "Hey," he said, "I was just at your desk to tell you to look at the weirdo climbing the tree. But you weren't there. Now I see why ..."

[CJ]

Ugh, I am JUMPY about having posted this, even though the upshot is that I got to my son in plenty of time to give him the help he needed, and he got out of the scariest tree-climbing episode he's ever experienced without a scratch on him. But I am sitting here in a fit of paranoia, wondering if I ought to take it down instead of being glad that I was able to vault across the fence easily when I needed to.

I wanted to clarify the around-the-block thing, because we live in a funny little spot that's more compact than most blocks. In the tree picture linked above, the brown roof at the left belongs to the next-to-last house at one end of the block. The sliver of white house on the right edge of the picture is the next-to-last house at the opposite end of the block. The distances involved are tiny -- a total of about 800 feet for a full circuit around the block.

[Pippi]

When my mom was a kid my grandma let them climb huge trees as far as they liked. They only had one rule: three of their limbs had to be attached to tree limbs at all times. One day a neighbor came over and was horrified to see my uncle way at the top of one of the trees. My grandma was completely undisturbed. None of her five kids ever got hurt. They neighbor never called CPS, either ;)I figure I'll have the same rule for my kids someday, though since I live in the Pacific Northwest where the trees are a lot bigger I do reserve the right to put a height limit on their climbing if it gets too out of hand.

[Lilian]

No childhood is ever complete without tree climbing, that's one of the reasons why we moved to this house here. Late last year, it must have been December, my husband called out to me to come out of the house and see what Kelvin, 5.5 at the time, was doing -- he was way up high in our neighbor's pine tree. K was much more worried than I was because he didn't have the childhood that *I* had, climbing countless trees... Kelvin did climb down safely, but we told him to let us know when he wanted to climb the tree again, and to wear a helmet... Both my boys are extremely cautious and skilled climbers, even the 4 year old, so once in a while, I let them climb the tree.

I'm glad that the policeman is going to talk to that woman... and I hope you hear back from CPS soon.