Communications Pro Blog

I babysit for two boys not far from my home twice a month. I don’t do it for the money. I do it because my three nieces and three nephews are pretty well grown up and I really, really like children. These boys let me get back to my inner child, and that’s a good thing. They don’t watch TV and the older one visits the web on rare, supervised occasions.
So when I visit their lovely Victorian home every other week, we simply play. Sometimes we play a game we made up called the Magical Maze of Mystery on the trampoline. Other nights we play Uno, or Candyland, or Twister! What fun. Their mom usually goes to the library or for a bike ride or cross country skiing and leaves us to our play. She usually prepares a nice (mostly) vegetarian meal and I finish it off and serve. After the dishes are done, we play some more. Fusball, freeze tag, Chutes and Ladders – are all fare game.
Recently there has been a haze over all of this. First, the family car was accidentally left unlocked one night and some creep took two backpacks and some small change. Their mother thought she might have had a spare key in the vehicle, so the locks were changed too. Then the next door neighbor’s home was burglarized. Not good.
This is where the power of suggestion comes into play.
My husband informed me that a gas station, in between their home and ours, had been robbed at gunpoint at dusk one night. He reminded me of this as I was leaving for my play date on a Wednesday night, which is not my typical night to sit.
The older boy was psyched to go with his Mom and his friend to a book signing and talk by an author they were big fans of. It was the first time the younger boy, age 5, and I would be home alone together.
I approached their home and saw my lively crew on the deck having an early dinner. We chatted for a spell. Life was calming down to their pace; no cell phones, no Internet, now worries, or so I thought. Then, while the younger boy was seeing the group off out front, I went back to my car at the rear of the property to retrieve my cell phone ‘just in case of an emergency.’ He was out front for all of two minutes, and I was back and forth to my Jeep in that time. But the doors were open and that could have been enough time for someone to enter the home. I didn’t think about it at the time, but once we were inside I suspected we weren’t alone. Something just didn’t feel right. I thought I heard noises.
We played a storytelling game for a while and then I suggested we write the story down and illustrate it. My young study was all game. As we were in the process of putting ‘our book’ together, I absolutely did hear noises upstairs. I left him alone and went to explore. The noises were not coming from the family cat as she was clearly in sight by the window – one of many windows and doors in this house. I went up the stairs and continued to hear noises, and then some moaning in the master bath. I announced myself and said I was calling the police. The only response was more muffled moaning. My heart raced and I will be the first to admit that panic set in. I picked up a Swiffer mop in the hallway as my only defense, and ran down the stairs with phone in hand ready to call 911.
I told my charge that someone was in the house and we should go quietly out the side door. His eyes grew wide, but he trusted and followed me. I called the police. Why wouldn’t I?
Once on the side of the house, I felt safer and as I was giving details to the dispatcher I noted that there was a strange car in the front driveway. The boy tugged on my now perspiration-drenched sundress and told me it was the cleaning lady’s car. Ding. I felt like a fool and told the dispatcher that I think we solved the mystery. Still, because it was a 911 call, they needed to send an officer out. I went in and confronted and then apologized to the cleaning woman, who had been upstairs for some time and the boy figured she had left. The moaning I heard was from her trying to scrub mildew off the stall shower, which is why she didn’t hear me. The mother and older boy, in their rush to get to the book signing, failed to tell me that someone else was in the home. We all had a good laugh about it after the fact.
The younger boy now had bragging rights to tell his older brother that the cops showed up and he had talked to them while his older sibling had missed out on all of the excitement by going to ‘some silly book signing.’
The whole episode raises the issue of the power of suggestion. Do you find yourself reading the business pages and hearing how bad the economy is, and using it as an excuse when you don’t get a piece of work? If you say you are hot and cranky, you and others around you, tend to become hot and cranky. Before I get up to give a talk, I have a mantra I say over and over again. “I am relaxed, confident, and calm.” It generally works. Next time, use the power of suggestion to your advantage and see if it works in a positive way.