Hi People,
Okay so I am an experienced parent. I have 4 children and I should know better. However, today I had a flash back of 13 years.Today I was taking a shower and my Dave was watching Dora. I was upstairs 10 mins max. All doors were locked and bolted. Windows were shut and locked. The dog was on attack mode. However, when I cam down stairs to reassure my poor little munchkin that he was safe and not alone, panic struck! He wasn't there! The dog wasn't talking. "Okay" I said to myself stay calm he has to be here somewhere. Now I know that a toddlers favorite game is to run and hide. My son calls it the " I hides" game. Usually it is someplace obvious and you laugh to yourself thinking that YOU will play it up and HE will get a kick out of it. By the way, I have a theory that this "game" is really a defense mechanism that has kept toddlers alive for 10's of thousands of years. I mean if you can't find them, then it is unlikely that a predator would either. Anyway I digress. This time I didn't have to play it up. I really couldn't find the little sucker. Oh, and he is QUIET. Hardly breaths when he knows you are looking for him. I started looking patiently KNOWING that I would find him in a flash. Well, the flash passed on my 3rd trip through the house. I was in pure panic mode.
So, now this takes me back to 13 years ago when my son Mark was just under 3. It was the middle of winter with like 8 inches of snow covered with ice on the ground. In the middle of the night I usually would wake up spontaneously and check on my sleeping babes. I couldn't find him. I checked my bed and his sisters. No sign of him. I ran around the house at 3 am turning on lights and looking everywhere. Then I checked the doors. My front door was unlocked for some reason. ( I had teen steps living there at the time.) So, I bolted outside and around the house bare foot in nothing but my shorts. Then the neighbors house too. Nothing and nowhere was this kid. I even checked the crawl space in the basement. (Crazy huh?) So, I went up stairs to tell his mom that couldn't find him. I thought better of it and decided to sit down and try to think rationally before I called the police and FBI. While walking to sit on the end of the bed I feel something firm under the comforter on the floor with my foot. Just bumped into it. So, I lift up the comforter and there he is tucked under the end of the bed fast asleep. Needless to say it took several hours before I got back to sleep.
Flash forward to today. Needless to say that nothing of what I learned 13 years ago crossed my mind. I ran outside with just a towel around my house and the neighbors. I was calling his name and bringing attention to myself. ( Looking back I am embarrassed but it will pass.) I run back in the house calling his name upstairs and down and the celler and the Bilco doors. Nothing. I walk back upstairs to the couch and sit down. He sneaks up behind me and laughs. Yeah he laughed!!!! He survived the hugs and kisses that followed and will be 3 in November.
What is the moral to this story? Don't panic your kid will be fine? Well, that's crazy, everyone panics when there kid is in mortal peril or kidnapped. Even if he is just hiding under the lamp table in the living room with a pillow in front to conceal him. Maybe, cave parents shouldn't have played this game, then there wouldn't be a bunch of hiding toddlers giving their parents strokes. No, by natural selection they would have been eaten by predators 10,000 years ago.
Oh my God! I laughed (sorry) I found my daughter on the roof when she was three. NOT FUNNY! She went out my bedroom window and stepped on the roof. It is very scary losing track of a kid, even when it is only for a second!
ReplyDeleteNo problem metalmom. It was meant to be funny. I would have been twice as scared had I found him on the roof. My worst fear is him walking out into the street. Cars speed by sometimes.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, glad we both got them back safe.:-)
I had a very similar adventure as Metalmom, my daughter too was out on the roof of a house we had just moved into, my son had yelled down from upstairs,"Mom come here!" I yelled back in a minute, ten minutes later, he yells again "Mom come here!" I yell back "In a minute" and continue to unpack the kitchen wares, another 10 minutes he appears in the kitchen with a strange look upon his face, takes me by the hand and pulls me up stairs (pretty strong for 6 yrs old at the time). He points into his room at the window, I said "What?" and go over to the window to see my daughter hanging from the window!!!!! Granted there was a roof not more then two feet below her, but the heart attack that insued after that was enough to cure any thoughts of having another child ever again!!! 2 years later boom! My third was born! I survived and so will you! Hahahahaha!
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