Little Escape Artists`

Why are toddlers always trying to get away? After having numerous conversations with friends recently about losing their kids at the fair, or the store or their neighborhood, and after finding Charlie (3yrs old) playing in our driveway, having unlocked the door by himself, we installed chain locks on all of our doors. We installed them at the very top of the door, and I find Charlie dragging chairs over to the doors to try to unlock the chain locks!!!!

Why are they always trying to get away? We provide a lovely home environment, comfortable, fun, siblings to hang with.... But I have decided this: I think that we, as mothers who have temporarily lost our children, have made our children so independent and so self assured that they are perfectly comfortable walking, toddling, running away from us. Along with their comfortable independent feelings of 'I can make it out their on my own' that we have instilled in their little minds by letting them help us cook, teaching them to dress themselves, having them brush their own teeth, and peel their own bananas, (as I type this my 3 yr old is loading cascade into the dishwasher)  in their little minds they are also thinking, "Mom, will come find me. Mom will take care of me. Mom always is there." Which is exactly what we want them to think and feel...just not when they are contemplating tearing through the neighborhood on their own.

I pray that our toddlers learn a healthy fear of the outside world and stay in the damn  house!

Also I do NOT want to forget:
-At Jack's Treekeeper (a respect for life and the environment program at our gradeschool) graduation, each child was to shake the mayors hand and get their certificate. Each 10 yr old went up to the mayor solemnly and sort of lamely and gave a dead fish handshake and grabbed their certificate...all accept my Jack. He walked up, strongly shook the mayors hand, looked him in the eye and said, "Thank you, It is very nice to meet you sir." So Proud!
-Charlie keeps making up words. I don't make up words for private parts. We just call them what they are. But apparently Charlie is uncomfortable with this, so he has made up his own words. He refers to all private parts as "tudu" or "tudi" - no idea why. He also has become fascinated with MY private parts and and can't get over the "hair on my tudi."
-Recently did story time in Elaina's first grade class. I read Horton Hatches the Egg - one of my favorites. I used fun voices for the characters as I usually do at home. Then I read some Shel Silverstien poems - so funny. There is one in there that is long and tongue twistery. I can read it superfast and absolutely perfectly. The class made me read it 3 times. Then the teacher asked me to read it one more time before I left. lol. The whole time I was reading, whenever Elaina's class was giggling or looking supremely interested - usually during a funny voice moment - Elaina would lean over and kiss my hand affectionately. She is so sweet. She was so proud to have a decent mom-reader.
-Elaina had her first piano recital this weekend. And Scott and Jack had their first recital since I began my Tiger-mom parenting technique that includes them practicing an hour a night. They were fantastic! Nailed their songs and were very proud of themselves : ) Yea!
-Ben is our easy, peacemaker, even tempered child. He makes parenting him easy. I had to fill out an evaluation form for Kindergarten for him the other day. For the question about my child's temperament regarding aggressiveness I quickly answered something like "Not at all. Never." That day, I got a call from the preschool teacher because Ben had kicked a boy in the stomach! I said, "Oh man! I just put on his Kindergarten form that Ben is not aggressive!" His teacher assured me that he was absolutely not aggressive and that he had just reacted from maybe having been pushed a bit overboard that day by his buddy. But just a lesson to me as a parent in "never say never." They all have their moments.