Just before my oldest turned two years old, I learned I was pregnant and then we got notified maybe a week or two later that we were finally getting into military housing. Moving into quarters was like going from being dirt poor to being middle class overnight.
Directly behind our new apartment was a playground. I was pregnant and my two year old had a long history of having trouble sleeping, so I took him to the playground probably every single day.
I would do the grocery shopping in the afternoon and then if I needed to stick something in the oven or thaw something or whatever, I would do a thing to get dinner started. Then my two year old and I would go to the playground for an hour.
When we got back inside, I would stick him in the bathtub and run back and forth between the kitchen and the bathroom to finish up dinner and keep an eye on my toddler. I would pull him out of the tub and wrap him in a bathsheet and he sometimes fell asleep right after dinner or sometimes before dinner.
Given that I was pregnant and he was an insomniac, this was blessed relief.
On the playground there was a slide. He loved going down the slide but we had this small hitch in that he wanted to climb the ladder HIMSELF.
This was really a bit much for him. He was really too small for this to be safe and as he would get tired, he was in real danger of falling off the ladder.
But if I touched him at all while he climbed the ladder, he would freak out and have a giant hissy fit. He was just adamant that he wanted to do it all by himself.
So the solution that ended up working was that I would make myself into a human safety cage without touching him. I would position myself with my arms to either side of him and holding the ladder with both hands without touching him.
As he climbed the ladder, I would lift one leg and bend my knee so if he slipped there was something just inches below him. But, again, I did not touch him. I left space between him and my leg.
He was willing to accept this solution. After he was an adult, he told me that it allowed him to learn the limits of his own body by pushing himself to the point of muscle failure without getting hurt.
He told me that later when he was around eleven or so and would go to the playground behind our house on a different military base, he routinely saw other kids go home only after skinning their knee or falling off the equipment and getting hurt. They didn't know how to judge when they were too tired and routinely got hurt.
He did not. He knew when he was too tired to keep playing safely in the heat and thin air of the High Desert because he got to push himself to the limit without getting hurt at a much earlier age.
So he consistently went home before he got hurt whereas other kids frequently only went home after hurting themselves.
Directly behind our new apartment was a playground. I was pregnant and my two year old had a long history of having trouble sleeping, so I took him to the playground probably every single day.
I would do the grocery shopping in the afternoon and then if I needed to stick something in the oven or thaw something or whatever, I would do a thing to get dinner started. Then my two year old and I would go to the playground for an hour.
When we got back inside, I would stick him in the bathtub and run back and forth between the kitchen and the bathroom to finish up dinner and keep an eye on my toddler. I would pull him out of the tub and wrap him in a bathsheet and he sometimes fell asleep right after dinner or sometimes before dinner.
Given that I was pregnant and he was an insomniac, this was blessed relief.
On the playground there was a slide. He loved going down the slide but we had this small hitch in that he wanted to climb the ladder HIMSELF.
This was really a bit much for him. He was really too small for this to be safe and as he would get tired, he was in real danger of falling off the ladder.
But if I touched him at all while he climbed the ladder, he would freak out and have a giant hissy fit. He was just adamant that he wanted to do it all by himself.
So the solution that ended up working was that I would make myself into a human safety cage without touching him. I would position myself with my arms to either side of him and holding the ladder with both hands without touching him.
As he climbed the ladder, I would lift one leg and bend my knee so if he slipped there was something just inches below him. But, again, I did not touch him. I left space between him and my leg.
He was willing to accept this solution. After he was an adult, he told me that it allowed him to learn the limits of his own body by pushing himself to the point of muscle failure without getting hurt.
He told me that later when he was around eleven or so and would go to the playground behind our house on a different military base, he routinely saw other kids go home only after skinning their knee or falling off the equipment and getting hurt. They didn't know how to judge when they were too tired and routinely got hurt.
He did not. He knew when he was too tired to keep playing safely in the heat and thin air of the High Desert because he got to push himself to the limit without getting hurt at a much earlier age.
So he consistently went home before he got hurt whereas other kids frequently only went home after hurting themselves.