The Undiscovered Country

Get Me A Mop. I'm Done.

I volunteer a lot at my church, mostly for the Kid's Ministry. We have a check in/out system for the kids. I help print name tags for the kids, and stickers for parents with a corresponding code that I compare when the parents pick up their children after church services. Parents like it, because they can be assured their kids won't run off and get lost, or in the case of divorced parents, they don't have to worry about their ex-husband or wife taking their children without them knowing.

My church hosted VBS (Vacation Bible School), and for the last three years, I helped with registration and check in/out. This year, however, they were short on group leaders, so they asked me to be a leader for elementary-aged kids from 1st-5th grade. I ended up with seven kids, two boys and five girls. Volunteers must have been really short, because while most groups had a high-school age helper, not me. Trying to herd seven kids, and make sure they pay attention, it was enough to exhaust this little old lady.

Just remembering their names was enough to stress me out, especially since some were so similar: Kenley, Kinley, Avery, Harper, Bella, Ben and Grant. I finally got all of them straight yesterday -- the last day of VBS.

And because they had (naturally) such short attention spans, I admittedly got frustrated a few times. I forgot more than once that the children's parents raise them differently from me, and that I should have been more aware and sensitive.

For instance, yesterday during the outdoor games, my group got extremely wet (they had to place a wet sponge on their head, and walk a certain distance without touching the sponge, otherwise they'd have to start over). Because it was so hot, my group was more interested in pouring water over their heads and on each other than actually playing the game.

As such, when we re-entered the air-conditioned building, they complained quite vociferously about how cold they were. I had very little sympathy for them. They did, after all, get themselves wet.

My youngest girl, Bella, finally told me to call her mom to get her dry clothes. I told her at first that it would take a while, and she would probably be dry by the time her mom arrived. If she were my daughter, I'd tell her to suck it up, honestly. But seeing she was near tears, I had someone call her mom. Luckily, her grandmother lived close, so she came by within five minutes, and Bella was a dry, happy girl the rest of the night.

Since I have only one child, and him being so easy-going and independent, by the second day of VBS, I felt ill-equipped and over my head in trying to take care of seven children of different ages and wildly different personalities. Because of that, I don't think I gave them the best experience of VBS that they could have had. And because they ran a little rough-shod over me, my group distracted the other groups enough that they, too, didn't have the best experience they could -- and should -- have had.

Come next year, if they need me as a group leader again (and I sincerely hope they don't), I may either decline or tell them I will need a helper. Based on this experience, I will (hopefully) do a better job, but at the same time, maybe not. I'm old and set in my ways. I fear I will forget that not every child is like my son, and not every parent parents the way I do. That's not fair to the other children at all, especially since I'm supposed to be there for them, not for me.

Add my VBS fatigue to the fact we had a severe thunderstorm with pea to nickel sized hail at four this morning, and a neighbor who let her dogs out at 5:45am to let them bark for a half-an-hour makes me one grumpy lady. I feel like a puddle of goo -- hence the need for a mop.