When my mother-in-law offered to help for once, I should’ve known there was a catch. One lie. One pair of scissors. And suddenly, my daughter’s trust \u2014 and her hair \u2014 were gone. I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I made one phone call. And the next day, she woke up ruined.When my husband, Theo, told me his mother had offered to watch our daughter for the day, I blinked at him like he’d just asked if I wanted to set the house on fire.”Your mom offered?” I repeated. “Denise?”Theo nodded without looking up from his phone. “Yeah. I think she wants to help. It’s just one day, Hilary.”My daughter, Theresa, had been up half the night with a fever and a sore tummy. She was eight, and her long golden hair was plastered to her forehead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had already called into work once this month, and today wasn’t optional.”When did you tell your mom that we needed her to babysit?” I asked.”When you were in the shower. She called me to ask if I could pick up a package for her. She offered to babysit, and I said yes.”When Denise, the woman who, for eight years, refused to babysit because her “dog gets separation anxiety,” suddenly offered, I should’ve trusted my gut and said no.Instead, I kissed Theresa’s head, handed over a bottle of fever medicine, and gave Denise a list of clear instructions. No outside time, no visitors, and absolutely no cold beverages.”She needs rest, cartoons, and fluids, Denise. Please<\/em>,” I said slowly, as if speaking to someone I didn’t quite trust.I almost laughed. Almost.By noon, I was half-reading an email when my phone lit up with Theresa’s name.Theo and I agreed that eight was too young for a phone, but when I’d upgraded mine, I’d chosen to give her my old phone for days like this, when we were separated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my mother-in-law offered to help for once, I should’ve known there was a catch. One lie. One pair of scissors. And suddenly, my daughter’s trust \u2014… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":237,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40841,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40839\/revisions\/40841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}