PARENTING December 7, 2009 Issue

NEW TERRITORY

ELIZABETH MASSEY

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, my husband and I moved our family across the country. This meant we were going home, as we had both grown up in New York State. Yet as a new stay-at-home mom, I was in new territory.

My first wake-up call occurred when the director of our son's nursery school phoned me a few weeks before Christmas. At the time, our son was two years old and attended school two morning a week. A parent in our son's class had learned, from a mutual acquaintance who knew that my husband and I were Christian Scientists, that our son was not inoculated. This parent was very concerned for the well-being of her daughter. The director was calling to alert me to the issue and to look for ideas on how to proceed.

Both the director and our son's teacher knew that we were Christian Scientists and were relying on the state's legal accommodation not to administer drugs for immunization. We had provided a signed religious accommodation form for the nursery school's files.