Schools closing throughout Minnesota due to extreme cold temperatures and arctic wind chills. Kids all over are doing the happy dance including my own. Parents not able to take a day off are panicking, trying to sort out bartered and traded child care. I am fortunate to have a daughter who is old enough for self care and a husband less than 5 minutes away from home. I expect to get texts and messages from my staff that have no options but to stay home. No one will be penalized for not being able to make it into work, though will need to use a vacation day, work from home, or flex their work week to make up lost hours. When my kids were young, I had a slew of family and friends, and always had understanding and accommodating employers for school closings or child sick days. There were days where my house was command central and I stayed home, while neighbors and siblings went to work and left their kids with me.
Not all families have the safety net of family or friends to help with back up care. For too many families, the choices are bleak. Stay home, and they risk job security and no wages. Leave young kids with an older student, and hope they are mature enough as a baby sitter to cope with a full day of care. Worse, leave children not really old enough for self care alone, and pray all goes well. I have no solutions, but know this is why we need to invest personal time and energy in building friendships and communities. No parent should have to make those tough, even dangerous decisions.
As a humane society, all lives are better when we make the most vulnerable feel secure. This does not have to come from hand outs and the welfare system, but neighbors and fellow parents that share in the idea that safe and healthy children, in supported families, grow into safe and healthy productive adults. I might have a Pollyanna view, and know there are people treated like door mats by fellow parents that never reciprocate for a child care favor, or even express appreciation. Too me, that's not community or friendship, but manipulation or misaligned sense of entitlement. I've no patience for either. However, all of us go through peaks and valleys when we're in positions to do a favor without expectation for return, and when we have need of the receiving end of the help. I'd like to think when children are involved, the willingness to pitch in is a bit higher. This is all just my humble opinion. Stay warm everyone.
