EMILY FLAKE FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL
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I have raised three children. Somewhere, that might qualify me as an "expert." It would certainly suggest that I'm capable of looking after one six-year-old for a few hours.
Still, when my neighbours were going out of town and asked me to watch their daughter – school pickup, playtime, dinner, bath and bedtime story – I was somewhat puzzled.
"Excuse me. You've met my grown children, no? You have seen my chaotic house, my devil-may-care attitude toward my garden, and my ill-trained dog? Are you sure you want me to look after your only child?"
Truthfully, any success I might have had with respect to child-rearing was more down to luck than parenting skills. I'm not so sure I'd want me in charge.
I sought clarification: What were the rules for school pickup? What were the expectations for activities, allowed/forbidden foods, TV-watching, bedtime? I realized how out of touch I've become with the care and feeding of the younger generation.
I recalled that when my kids were young, security at schools was being tightened. Though I sometimes wished someone else would take my three little hooligans, I understood (intellectually) the need for security. Children had a secret password that the adult picking them up knew. In reality, though, our close-knit neighbourhood was such that the kids knew grandparents, parents and sitters and they did occasionally jump in someone's car to hitch a ride home. Lax times.
When I quizzed my neighbours about putting in writing my permission to pick up their daughter, they assured me it wasn't necessary.
"You'll have our dog with you. Everyone knows Jewel."
Really? The dog is my password, proof that I'm not an axe-murderer? Apparently, all I had to do was point at the dog and say: "I'm with her." The dog is the size of a small horse, so maybe that explained it?
Upon further discussion with the parents, I found the new brand of security puzzling. The school doors are locked during the day. Every visitor reports to the main office. But I was allowed to pick up a child with a dog? Has disordered thinking spread from the airports? (Today, a shampoo bottle is fine. Tomorrow, not so much. Take your shoes off; don't take your shoes off.) A sign of our times?
With child and horse, uh, dog safely back on home territory, the question of dinner came up. I'd brought my famous homemade macaroni, minus the tomatoes as I'd been informed my charge doesn't like them. Fair enough.
With my own experience having three picky children with all the major food allergies, I was nothing if not inventive with meals. This was barely a blip on my radar screen.
I also knew from sad experience that, if an opportunity presented itself for my three urchins to outwit a sitter, they would seize it: "Mommy lets us have hot dogs, cheese, ice cream and cotton candy for dinner. Honest!"
This was not my first rodeo. Expecting this young girl to be cunning, I was gobsmacked when she told me accurately what food was allowed.
My degenerates would have raided the Girl Guide cookie stash in their dad's office, licked the icing from between the layers, and put the cookies back together as if nothing were amiss. Come to think of it, they did! They would then rat each other out as the culprit.
I dreaded bath time. The child was allowed playtime with bubbles and toys. She was to be in bed, story read, by 8 p.m. Again, drawing on my own experience, I thought no child gets out of the tub when required, and they invariably want 38 stories, inching bedtime toward midnight. Not this girl. The whole process was finished and she was in bed by 8. Quiet, with the lights out.
I recalled my son's predilection to jump out of bed as soon as I'd left his room, bundle all his favourite toys in his arms and tiptoe to the bathroom (a.k.a. the Annex) to play until reported by his sisters.
Many times, the three amigos were lined up, questioned and found wanting when the toilet was mysteriously covered with Vaseline, or the back step – and consequently the dog – painted purple.
I thought back to a Christmas years ago. My son had persuaded his sisters to help ferret out Santa's presents. Among the three of them, they stood guard, climbed and vaulted into a locked wine cellar to discover a bright red pedal car with my son's name on it.
Christmas Day dawned. My son was first to the tree to get his car. But it wasn't there! He knew he couldn't ask, since that would incriminate him. He and his sisters exchanged puzzled, guilty looks. Once the presents were all unwrapped, my son found a note from Santa. It explained that "crime doesn't pay." We eventually produced the car to a chastened "perp."
I congratulated myself on successfully managing the babysitting assignment. Two factors conspired to make victory mine: First, past experience had me expecting the worst; and second, this child was well-trained – as an only child often is. A life of rebelliousness and petty crime is pointless when there is nobody else to blame.
Laurie Best lives in Waterloo, Ont.