Please Don't Take My Kids Away

I'm afraid of the CPS worker... afraid they'll show up at my door and take my kids away. You could tell me that I'm crazy, but I already know.
I keep seeing articles about families being investigated for education neglect just because they homeschool, or for letting their children play at the park. I wonder some times what my mom was thinking because when I remember walking alone to the beach.

Yes.

The beach.

Three blocks from my house.

The beach; with all of Lake Michigan just sitting there waiting for me to drown in it, a no barriers or hand rails break wall to run on and fall off of into the rocks and drown, AND a gigantic slide with no side rails that I could  (and actually did once) fall from the top of.

I walked there, crossing streets, all three blocks.

I was five.

FIVE YEARS OLD!

But, I digress, because honestly I'm way more paranoid than that and I would never let my five year go the beach alone, even though I did. Isn't that weird? What is so different now?

It's fear.

I'm afraid of what might happen to him and I'm afraid that someone would call the police and I would be dealing with over zealous social workers for THE. REST. OF. MY. LIFE.

Or worse.

My children would just be gone. Forever.

But, like I said, I'm not sending my five year old alone to the beach, so what am I afraid of?

Well, first, they might see my eight year old riding a Go-Cart 40mph down the middle of the road on the steep hill by our house,

or they might see that same kid jumping from the top of a tree or trying to climb freestyle up the rocky side of the church next door,

or they might see my two year old sitting under the dining room table with a blanket and a box of cereal, eating out of the box and not having even one single bite of dinner.

Or they might have seen what my laundry room looked like before I cleaned it out and took two full trash bags out of that mess.

Or they might see my twelve year old falling all over the pavement trying to do tricks on his new skateboard without a helmet.

Or they might just say, 8 KIDS!? That's too many.

Or maybe one day they'll be walking down the sidewalk in front of our house and they'll hear what I hear when I stand outside hanging towels on the line.

SCREAMING!

Even when they are having fun and playing happily, they are LOUD. Loud enough that I can hear them through the walls with the windows closed. It's even worse when the windows are open.

Then, I realize that if you add in my voice and my husband's voice, it's probably doubly loud. And, that's when I start thinking... someone is going to walk by this house and they are going to call someone and say something is going on in that house. And then I start to wonder where I can hide my kids, but there's no where to hide because we are so stinkin' loud that people can hear us through the walls.