Nurseries for Parents on the Edge

You love her so much. But she’s whining.

And you can’t stand it anymore.

She’s pulling on your legs, wailing, her cheeks blotched red, snot gobbed on her nose, whining and wanting, this daughter of yours. She whines, whines, whines and you’ll never get peace and she whines, whines, wails and her big brother howls and the baby wakes up in the other room screeching and you’ll never, never, never have a moment to yourself.

She whines and he howls and the baby screeches and you could just smack them all.

You could. Just smack them. You could. Next time, you might.

And it frightens you.

“I just felt in tears,” said Ellen Jackson-Cato, one mother who has been there. “I felt like I was going to lose control.”

She didn’t. Her three children are fine. And so is she, thanks in part to the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery, an unusual program designed to head off child abuse by giving on-the-brink parents a break.

The nursery’s brochure says it all: “Sometimes a few days apart from your kids is the best way to keep your family together.” This is not about the county hustling children from dangerous homes. Not about a judge taking custody from bad parents. It’s about moms and dads deciding, on their own, that they need some time off before they explode. The nursery gives them that respite.

“We give them space,” director Kathy Schaaf said.

Dozens of crisis nurseries around the nation boast similar goals. But most, including Para Los Ninos in Los Angeles, are open only during the day. The Minneapolis program is one of just a few to care for kids around the clock. Parents can drop off children, newborns to age 7, for up to three days at a time. It’s free. And anyone in the county can use it. Each year, about 720 families do.

There are bubble baths for the toddlers who lost their mother--and their home--in a fire. Tuna melts for the twins whose mom couldn’t stand one more day of dragging her family to shelters. There are puzzles and bikes and “Cinderella” videos for kids whose mothers are fleeing abusive boyfriends or adjusting to new antidepressants.

The nursery cared for Jackson-Cato’s three children when she needed some time alone with her husband to talk through the aggravations fraying their marriage. It took in Heather Houge’s three kids--redhead Josh, ever-revved-up Jesse and Chelsea, the sturdy toddler--when she felt she couldn’t go on without a full night’s sleep. And when her grandma died and she couldn’t stop crying. And when she suffered an epileptic seizure and had to stay in the hospital overnight.

“There’s every reason you can think of, and 100 more, why people use us,” Schaaf said.

Or, as Houge put it: “This is a good place for if you’re going to fall apart. . . . For the safety of your children and for your own health, you really, really need it.”

Yet even their biggest advocates point out that crisis nurseries have a key limitation: They’re geared more toward quick fixes than lasting interventions. After all, few parents in crisis--homeless, unemployed, addicted, unstable--can solve their problems in three days.

That’s why some experts worry that parents may come to use crisis nurseries as a crutch, forestalling an immediate blowup but never dealing with the stresses that pushed them to the edge in the first place. “If it’s used as an excuse for not dealing with the substantive issues [that threaten a family], then that can be a problem in itself,” said Kevin Kirkpatrick, a spokesman for the advocacy group Prevent Child Abuse America.

To prod parents to confront those deeper problems, social workers at the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery ask them to list three goals they’ll work on during their respite. Those goals might be as ambitious as kicking a drug habit or as basic as taking a long, hot bath so they won’t be as edgy when their little one whines.

Staff Stays Attuned to Pleas for Help

If parents aren’t willing to cooperate with social workers--if it seems they’re using the nursery as a free baby-sitting service, not as a chance to deal with a crisis--administrators will ask them not to return. But such cases are rare. And staff members are cautioned not to dismiss pleas for help just because a parent’s problems seem trivial. If a mom feels she’s in crisis, she is--and her kids will be too, unless she gets a break.

“We see suburban middle-class moms from intact families, with husbands, in here with a toddler because they’re totally stressed out and need help with parenting skills,” said Lynn Lewis, who’s in charge of the nursery’s social workers. “And we see homeless moms not wanting their kids to sleep in the car.”

In an initiative that started only last year, counselors try to nudge those clients with overwhelming problems toward signing “contracts” to work with the nursery beyond three days. If a parent agrees to meet regularly with social workers and allow home visits, nursery staff will prep them for job interviews, guide them through the welfare system, hook them up with food pantries--whatever it takes to stabilize the family so parenting doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

One family counselor, a nurse, gave an HIV test to a mom who had been raped and couldn’t focus on her kids for fear she had AIDS. Another drove a mother from apartment to apartment to help her find decent, affordable housing.

Even with such help, about a quarter of the nursery’s clients return month after month after month, pushing the limit of 30 days of care per child per year. Because so many of their clients are homeless or transient and are hard to track, the nursery has not compiled data on how many parents overcome their problems and how many slide into deeper crisis or even end up abusing their kids. Social workers can point to some cheering success stories. But they also see some children coming into the nursery looking hungrier and more ragged each month.

“We are making progress,” Schaaf said. “But it’s going to be slow. And it’ll never be enough.”

While there’s no central database to track cases nationwide, several crisis nurseries report swelling demand, due in part to welfare reforms that pile stress on struggling families by cutting off benefits if parents don’t move toward work.

To handle the demand, the Minneapolis nursery, founded in 1981, expanded last month, opening a second facility, bright with Winnie the Pooh murals and Minnie Mouse mobiles. Between them, the two buildings can now serve 35 children a night. Even so, the nursery turns parents away several times a week, sometimes because all beds are full and sometimes because there are not enough care providers to maintain the state-mandated ratio of one staffer for every three children.

Nurseries Seek Different Approaches

In California too, an overnight crisis nursery run by the Sacramento Children’s Home has found “we turn away as many kids as we take in,” director Sue Bonk said. The center will soon add four beds to its current six. The Bay Area Crisis Nursery in Concord, meanwhile, is opening a facility to serve children ages 6 to 10 after nearly two decades of growing demand.

Other crisis nurseries are experimenting with different approaches, such as sending a baby-sitter to a family’s home to take care of the kids while the parents take care of themselves.

The catch, as always, is money.

There are no federal funds set aside for this kind of crisis care, so most nurseries rely on state and local grants--and lots of private contributions.

In Minneapolis, about 600 volunteers pitch in to cook lunches, read bedtime stories and wash off the squirmy 11-month-old who decides mashed potatoes make a nifty hair gel. The nursery also counts on donations to stretch its $1.6-million annual budget by keeping its closets stocked with clothes, baby food, diapers and teddy bears.

Although the nursery is open to anyone, regardless of income, three-quarters of the clients earn less than $10,000 a year. Nearly all are women. And 86% are single. Most say they can’t count on any close friends for support. And 38% are homeless. The stresses in their lives loom huge.

By definition, however, they’re not bad parents. If they were, they wouldn’t realize they need help. “The ones who call us know what it takes to be a good mom,” Schaaf said. And they know when they’re in danger of falling way short.

Yes, there are times when the nursery staff is wary about returning a child to his parents; they do their best to follow up with home visits. When they suspect a child already has been abused--it happens a couple times a month--they turn the case over to the county.

But for the most part, “you feel good telling the kids, ‘Your mommy loves you so much, and that’s why you’re here,’ because you know it’s true,” nursery volunteer Jennifer Sagawa said. “Their families care enough to try to do something.”

It took Angie Rades some time to accept that premise.

Need for a Break Takes Priority

A college graduate and stay-at-home mom, married with two healthy, bubbly daughters, Rades thought, “God, I’m a failure,” the first time she was tempted to use the crisis nursery. She thought she should be able to handle motherhood on her own. Yet there are times, she has found, when she absolutely has to have a break, when her girls need more than she has in her to give.

Those are the times when she feels like slamming 15-month-old Alexis down in her crib and commanding: “Stay in there!” The times when 3-year-old Kiersten requests one more hug and she feels like screaming: “Get away from me! Don’t touch me! Can’t you just leave me the hell alone!”

Rades says she’s never come close to hitting her daughters, not even in these most despairing of moments. But she doesn’t want to yell hateful thoughts at them, either. She can’t stand the thought that she might lose control and hurt Kiersten with her words, that she might make Alexis feel unloved or unwanted. “I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m just afraid.”

So when she absolutely cannot cope for a minute longer--”when things,” she says, “are just as bad as they can get”--Rades brings Kiersten and Alexis to the nursery, usually just for a 10-hour day, but twice now for overnight stays.

Used to the nursery, which she calls “play group,” after several visits over the last few months, Kiersten padded out of her room in borrowed purple pajamas one recent morning, blond hair mussed, bright face peppy, looking for someone to chat with. Her sister was guzzling a bottle from a stranger. Another stranger was guiding a sleepy boy to the bathroom. Unfazed by all the new faces around her, Kiersten sized up her options and went straight for the one empty lap in the room.

“Hi,” she said, snuggling up to caretaker Carly Schumacher. “What’s your favorite color?”

Hugs, it’s clear, are much in demand, even for kids as cheery as Kiersten. For despite the enticing toys in every room, despite the comfy beds made up with cartoon sheets, a stay in the nursery can be disorienting. Home for these kids might be a car, a shelter, or an apartment crowded with three other families, but it’s still home, in a way the nursery can never be. Likewise, Mom is still Mom, no matter how frazzled she gets. And it’s hard to adjust to three nights without her.

Joy Gives Way to Need for Mommy

On this day, for instance, a 2-year-old boy with chubby red cheeks jumps out of bed exuberant, racing around the hallways and grabbing other toddlers in huge, sloppy hugs. But by breakfast, the joy of exploration has faded. Lonely and scared, he whimpers.

“I need my mommy,” he says. “Want mommy.”

Schumacher tells him his mommy loves him. His mommy, she assures him, will be back soon. He clings to her, unconvinced. “Mommy,” he keeps saying. “Want mommy.”

At 10 a.m., his mother calls to check on him. Schumacher hands him the phone and he stands there, motionless, listening to mommy, tears rolling down his chubby cheeks. He’s too overcome to say a word. When Schumacher finally, gently, hangs up the phone, he jumps in her lap.

For the rest of the morning, he stays there.