I am all about fun and common sense. Shrugging my shoulders at the foreseeably stupid with a, “That’s what you get” attitude comes easy. But now that I’m a parent and I have a duty to protect my son from his own
Dylan’s ability to transcend the seemingly safe into the dangerous is a major contributor to the woe. My kid could be in a padded room full of down feathered pillows and still figure out the quickest way to break a bone. Do you know what that kind of talent that demands of me? Supervision. And I don’t just mean watching him like a pigeon on a telephone wire, I mean SUPER VISION. Like eyes on the top, the sides, and on the back of the head type vision. And after repeating cautionary tales and explanations as to why we don’t run in the street, climb on top of tables, or stand on objects with wheels, all I really wanna do is look the other way and say, “Didn’t I tell you to be careful?!” Because he doesn’t listen and I’m sick of being so damn bossy.
And recently, I gifted Dylan freedom. I no longer stroller him up when we walk the dog. He loves it! But for me, it’s more work. When he isn’t running up to neighbors’ doors to bark at their barking dogs (which is hilarious), he’s waiting until I’m preoccupied with picking up our beagle’s crap to perform staircase acrobatics. He’s calculated like that. But I’m steadily becoming desensitized to all the madness that is parenting a feral child. So yesterday, when Dylan bolted ahead of me, I rolled the dice and said OH FREAKING WELL. I kept my mouth shut and watched on as Dylan jumped in the air and planted his ass flat on the sidewalk. Like, intentionally. And he did it again: ran, jumped, and slammed his butt in a sitting position on the concrete, laughing hysterically. I shrugged. I just don’t get it. Doesn’t he have a tail bone?
Clearly the kid is made of leather and can withstand a little trauma. He thinks it’s funny! And since I’m sick of being a rule maker/common sense enforcer/future seeer/probability-statistic-computer, I’m going to revert back to my natural state of shoulder shrugs and told you so’s. My little concrete ninja wants the freedom to learn common sense the hard way, literally. And so begins a bountiful series of, “I told you! Be careful!” Pray for us guys, this new approach could go either way.
