One Sunday, I was on my way to the Primary Room with my 3-year-old. His Sunbeam teacher had asked me to sub for her, but before I got there, one of my 8-year-old’s classmates ran into the hall and called for help. When my 8-year-old arrived at his Primary class, he immediately got his finger stuck in a folding chair. He was bleeding and screaming. His teachers had not yet arrived in the room.
My 10-year-old tried to hold onto the 3-year-old while I freed the 8-year-old from the chair where his finger was trapped. When I got him out, I saw that the skin on his finger was peeled off. He was bleeding profusely and still screaming.
I asked my 10-year-old to look for my husband. She couldn’t find him. My 3-year-old would consistently run away during Primary unless a parent or his teacher was holding him, and of course, I knew his teacher wasn’t there, so I carried the 3-year-old in one arm and dragged my 8-year-old with the other to the supply room, where I thought maybe I could find a first aid kit.
I did find one in there! So I closed the door, asked my 10-year-old to block it so that the 3-year-old wouldn’t run away, and bandaged up the 8-year-old. Who was still screaming. Loudly.
I thought maybe dulling the area with ice would help ease the pain and slow the bleeding, so I sent my 10-year-old to the kitchen to get ice. I gave her a disposable latex glove from the supply room to put it in. She came back empty-handed. No ice in the freezer.
I recalled that as I was parking at the church that morning, I had noticed that someone had dumped out a bag of ice on the grounds. Maybe some of it was still there?
I asked my 10-year-old to guard the door so that the 3-year-old wouldn’t escape while I ran for ice. I brought a spray bottle and rag with me and stopped along the way to clean up the blood puddle my son had left in the church classroom. Like manna from heaven, a tiny bit of ice awaited me outside, not melted yet. I put it in the glove and tied a knot in it. I was probably away from the supply room for about ten minutes.
I ran back to the supply room and found the wounded 8-year-old, all alone, still screaming, and standing outside the supply room instead of inside it where I told him to wait. My clever plan to trap the escape artist toddler and simultaneously muffle the screams of the injured child behind a door had been foiled. What happened?
While I was away, the bishop kicked my kids out of the supply room and then went back to his office, leaving my children to fend for themselves in the hall. Of course, my 3-year-old immediately ran away as soon as they were forced out of the supply room.
Maybe the bishop was oblivious to the emergency situation that I would have thought self-evident given the screaming, and the blood, and the bandages. Or maybe he noticed, but felt his supply room rule was more important. Perhaps no one ever told him that a screaming, bleeding 8-year-old is the kind of person who needs adult help.
I sat my 8-year-old down with the makeshift ice pack and told him to stay put while I searched for his siblings. I found my 10-year-old trying to catch the running 3-year-old, caught him, and brought them both to my 8-year-old, who was finally just crying, not screaming.
This is when a Primary Presidency member found us and wanted to know why I wasn’t with the Sunbeams at Primary where I was supposed to be. After explaining, I told my 10-year-old to stay with the 8-year-old while I looked for their father. I took the 3-year-old with me.
I found my husband in a classroom, pulled him out, and asked him to stay with the 8-year-old until he calmed down and make sure that the finger wasn’t broken. At last, I sent my 10-year-old to her own Primary class and carried my 3-year-old to Sunbeams, where I belatedly attended to my substitute duties.
After church that day, I vented to friends about my chaotic day of “worship.” One of them said, “This deserves to be a blog post.” I considered it, but most of my blog posts have some sort of point to illustrate, a lesson learned, a moral, a take-away that ties it all together. And what was the lesson learned from all that chaos? Years later, I still don’t know.
So I’m leaving this to you, my readers. What is the moral of this story? Is it a cautionary tale? A metaphor? A call for change? (If the latter, to what, exactly?) Please tell me in the comments; help me interpret this old memory of that messy Sabbath day.
18 Responses
Your needs were invisible to your people. If there is a moral to the story it’s that LDS church is great at the appearance of turning to Christ, but not the actual work of what that entails.
This is when you figure out that leadership is not inspired, your priorities are misaligned to church obligation instead of your children, and something is deeply wrong with nobody helping you with your injured child because they are all sleepwalking through the two hours of church service.
What Amber said.
I echo the statement above. I’d have left. Taken my children home and called it a day. Their needs far outweighed any responsibilities that could be met by someone else. These days I’d have called the bishop out, kindly, as well as the primary president. But I’m an old mom now who has shed the guilt factor that plagued my youth from years of being taught that I had to do it all and never utter a word of the struggles I endured. I hope that when I hear a screaming child I don’t ignore it and try to help.
It’s wild that the bishop was like, “screaming, bleeding children should be left unobserved in the HALLWAY, not the CLOSET. My duty here is done.” Even in this extreme situation, the bishop did not view helping children in distress (or their parents) as part of his Sunday obligations.
When I was attending with young children, church was often the most stressful part of my week. The only regular (though not weekly) situations that matched the stress was waiting for the pediatrician with multiple young children in a tiny room or waiting for the vet with a puppy and multiple young children.
The lesson from the story is that your children should be your first priority and the primary president should have found an emergency substitute and allow you to take care of your children. The primary president should have found your husband for you to help you care for your injured child and the one that could not be left unattended. Or, the Bishop should have taken both children by the hand and gone to find a parent. There were several chances to help you and your ward failed you. Mothers should not be abandoned to care for injured children and still put a primary class as a priority above their children. If motherhood is so important, why doesn’t the church community support mothers. Massive fail on the part of your leaders.
The moral is that your kids are your priority. I’m sorry nobody helped you out; that should have been theirs.
This post made me think of that old line of writing advice: “If you want to write about something big, write about something small”. Your story smartly alluded to a bigger message that I will be thinking about for a while. The invisible work of young mothers? The apathy of the ward members around you? A pitfalls of having exclusively-male leadership (would a female bishop have reacted differently to the scene in the supply closet?)? Thank you for sharing this story…and I hope your sweet 8-year-old’s finger was okay!
I had a similar accident with my long ago 8yr old, the big difference was that o had many people come to see if they could help. I ended up taking the 8yr old to an instacare, but I didn’t have to even think about what to do with my other 2 kids, I knew that the ward, and my husband were taking care of things.
I think that perhaps the lesson is that all ward cultures are different, and yours may need some fixing. I’d recommend talking to the Bishop about how things were handled, and perhaps see if there can be encouragement for the ward leaders to make needed changes, to help foster a more compassionate and collective culture.
Thank you for sharing April. I agree with Anadine that this is a culture problem. I’m sorry you had this experience and wish it had been different. What if one of your “sisters” or “brothers” saw blood and trauma and ran to find the first aid kit? What if another Primary teacher saw the 3 year olds and brought them in to their class? What if the Primary president gave you the benefit of the doubt and trusted you had a good reason to be late? What if the bishop realized one of his sheep was in distress and led them to a foyer to comfort and calm? What if someone (or many someones) saw your distress and said How Can I Help? I wish all of that had happened for you and I hope you’ll continue to share your story in an effort to change the culture.
My husband was called as a young bishop when we had two babies eleven months apart and a five year old. We agreed that every Sunday, one of the babies would sit with me in the congregation and one of the babies would sit with him on the stand. On the Sundays he was conducting or speaking, he would hand the baby/child off to a counselor or someone else sitting on the stand. A few people commented negatively to me and to him about how it was distracting and inappropriate for a baby to be on the stand. It took some time but our ward family adjusted and we hear from people even now, 25 years later, that they loved seeing leadership/parenting/priesthood shared in that way. It wasn’t strategic, it was necessary and it shouldn’t have been such a revolutionary idea.
Nothing is more frustrating to me than a ward member giving the stink eye to a family in Sacrament meeting because a child is talking/crying. Seriously? Is that how you bear another’s burdens? Your experience is a good reminder to me (and maybe should be to all of us as disciples of Christ?) to WATCH for opportunities to love and serve each other–opportunities in Sacrament meeting, in the halls and parking lot at church, in our neighborhoods, grocery stores and every other place we find ourselves.
Jesus didn’t want a church of priests and Levites, he wanted people who would act as the good Samaritan. This is a modern day telling of that story, minus the Samaritan showing up…
A case could be made the “Good Samaritan” was the older sister who co-grounded the situation by staying with her family instead of going to class:)
That being said, it is a “purity” vs “pragmatic loving-kindness story”. The focus for the background characters was the “purity of the buildings” rather then “loving-care for children in pain”. “Purity of the Plan” vs “loving-kindness for The Plan meeting reality”.
Wow, I honestly never thought of it this way, but I can see how the parable of the Good Samaritan parallels my experience! (Although, many other commenters faulted me for not prioritizing my kids enough by staying in the church and not going home, so I certainly can’t presume to place all the blame on an unhelpful bishop and primary presidency member.)
Individual ward leaders may or may not make decisions to prevent this, but until the leadership at the top does something, there will always be situations like this. It makes me think that either the women general authorities lack vision to practically help the church, or they aren’t given the authority to implement their ideas.
April,
Thank you for sharing your cautionary tale, I am saddened by the situation and the opportunity for others to cast disparaging commentary, but that is their agency. As a member of a part member family and the father of two daughters, I often found myself wrestling between temporal and spiritual needs. Back when my daughters were primary aged, I was often pulled out of classes to attend to their needs. If both needed my attention at the same time, the responsibility fell completely on my shoulder. I did not expect or enlist the assistance of others.
Moving forward, I was called to serve in a bishopric, and recalled the guidance from the First Presidency and General Handbook requiring two-deep leadership where the youth is involved. Our ward, although large, faced many a Sunday when the Primary classes either had to be combined or substitute teachers were recruited. No one, starting from the Bishopric, Primary Presidency, members of the ward felt the pressure and powerlessness of the calling/assignment with following the guidelines set forward and doing their best job.
I recall one Sunday morning in a Bishopric meeting, we were informed that a member was pointed out and accused of abusing their child by disciplining them in a manner an onlooker felt was inappropriate. The caller wanted the bishop to report the member to CPS. From the stand, none of us witnessed the alleged abuse and no one reported it so there was no grounds for the report from his perspective. If the child had indicated that he or she was a victimized, we would have reported it immediately.
The reason I bring this up is, we live in a society that make judgements based on their perception. Your situation, extreme as it was to you at the time, may have appeared as minor and manageable by those around you. Two deep leadership when youth are present, especially in a closed space, may have been the bishop’s sole consideration. Having said that, he could have handled things differently, but without knowing what his schedule included, I cannot judge. The Primary President, if not aware of the situation, should have been informed and a request for another member to fill in should have been made immediately.
I apologize for the lengthy comment, I am sure there will be those who disagree with my assessment. I am simply stating that without a full understanding of each party’s intent, it is easy to say more should have been done. Thankfully you were able to locate your husband and assistance rendered. Parenting is overwhelming for sure, when you have a “tribe” and the expectation of the “village” mentality works when employed righteously.
I think you hit on part of the problem, actually.
“Your situation, extreme as it was to you at the time, may have appeared as minor and manageable by those around you.”
There were only 4 players actively involved in the situation:
a) The 8 year old in a painful situation.
b) The 4 year old being a 4 year old in a deep situation.
c) The 13 year old trying to help solve the problems.
d) The mom running around with all 3 needs to balance while remembering the needs of the other parties (the Primary President and the the other class).
The mom didn’t have the time to more actively involve other people and make them aware of the situation. Even after it was sorted out, the mom got “judged” by others before her own recovery and explanation of the situation.
I think that we are processing as a community, the times we need to see a situation and step in, and the times we don’t (and the related justifications). Lots of people saw/heard “parts of the drama”, but didn’t have time/talent/desire/inclination to “look under the hood” and really get it and really help out.
This was contrasted against times reported by other readers when someone “connected the dots”, “gathered stray kids”, “followed the siren” and made themselves available to help resolve the situation.
That’s actually why “The Good Samaritan” analog comment was super applicable.
Update:
I thought the 10 year old was 13. Delayed kuddos to this human:)
In this situation, my sweet 10-year-old really stepped up and acted beyond her years! I understand the confusion!