Ready Kids › First Job Ready › Badge 3 › Lesson 3.3
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You are allowed to leave
Recognise when a job has stopped being safe for you, and get yourself out with one call home.
1Look
The front door, from inside
The front door, from inside
A hallway at night: the sitter's coat on a hook, her phone in her hand, and behind her a lit lounge doorway with adult voices coming from it.
Nothing in this picture is an emergency. This lesson is about the ten minutes before it might be.
2The idea
You are allowed to leave a job
It is a job. You can leave it, tonight, halfway through. Reasons: a client comes home and is not safe to be around, drunk or angry. An adult you were not told about turns up and stays. Someone in the house has moved your Feeling Dial to Scared. The parents do not come back and do not answer. Being paid does not mean staying. Nobody can keep you in a house.
Here is the knot: you cannot leave a small child alone. The way out of the knot is that you do not leave alone. You ring your parent to the house, and the child goes to the safe adult you name. If a child is in danger right now, that is 911 first, then your parent. Otherwise: the call, the coat, the wait.
3The idea
The exit, in order
1. Feeling Dial: Twitchy that will not settle, or Scared. That is enough.
2. Go somewhere you can talk. The kitchen, the child’s room, the bathroom.
3. Ring your parent. Say: I need you to come and get me now. Then the address.
4. Client parent home? The child is with them. You wait somewhere with a door, coat on, phone in hand. Nobody home? You stay with the child and your parent comes to you.
5. Your parent arrives, you leave. Tell tonight, all of it.
The call is four words: come and get me. Your parent does not need a reason on the phone, and you do not need to have one ready. The reason is for the car on the way home. What they need on the phone is the address, which is why it is on your phone from lesson one of this badge.
4Say it
The call
Say it like a fact, not a question
“I need you to come and get me now. I'm at 14 Elm Road.”
Your parent does not need a reason on the phone. They need the address.
5The idea
Layla, twenty past eleven
Layla is sitting. The mum is due at eleven. At twenty past, the mum and two friends come in, loud, wine in hand, and one of them keeps telling Layla to stay and have a drink. Dial: Twitchy, and going up. The child is asleep upstairs. The mum is home. Layla goes to the kitchen and rings her dad: Can you come and get me now. 14 Elm.
She puts her coat on, waits in the hall with her phone out, and says to the mum: my dad’s here in five. He is there in eight. She tells him everything in the car. Nobody had to do anything wrong. Twitchy that kept climbing was enough. If someone had been hurt or threatening, 911 first, then dad.
6Decide
The parents were due at eleven. It is half twelve, they are not back and not answering. The kids are asleep. What do you do?
Pick one to carry on.
7Your turn
Three situations, three exits
Three exits
Three scenes: the parents late and not answering, the client's friend who will not leave you alone, and a client who comes home unsafe to be around. For each, put the exit steps in order. A wrong order plays out to show what goes wrong.
In all three the call is the same. What changes is where the child is while you wait.
8Find them
Which of these are reasons to make the call?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Do it
Before you leave this page
Practise the call with a parent. Ring them from another room and say the line with a made-up address. Then agree what they would do: come to the house, every time, no questions until you are in the car.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
If the Dial goes past Twitchy and stays there, you ring home and you leave. Your parent comes to the house.
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