Elevator

When Owen was two or three he wandered off a little, as most kids do.  He never went too far, but often got interested in something and simply walked toward it in a store (or wherever we were.)  As he became confident that I would always follow him,  he began to get bolder, and it became much harder to keep track of him despite explanations that he would be scared if we got separated.   I mentioned being worried about this to my friend Becca.  She suggested that I let Owen think he had lost me for a minute or two the next time that he wandered so that he understood how scary being alone was.  This advice had been told to Becca by another mom, and the experience had worked well for this mom and for Becca and her daughter who was the same age as Owen at the time.

So the next time Owen wandered off, I ducked behind a column in the store, and watched him for a few minutes.  As expected, when he didn’t' see me right away after looking up, he became instantly worried.  His eyes got big and wet, and he looked around back and forth quickly from one side to another.  After 5-10 long seconds, I stepped out calling, “Owen.”  He ran over to me, and grabbed me into a big hug.  From that point on, he wanted to stay with me and would let me know if he wanted to look at something and we would go together.  I was a great learning experience for Owen to feel that fear at a time when he was actually quite safe.

When Jack reached the same age, he too started to become independent, and felt confident to wander away from me when we were out and about.  Just like Owen, Jack seemed unconcerned when I explained that it would be scary if we became separated. 

So I thought it was an appropriate time to “hide” from him one day when he had wandered away from me in a store.  Just as I had done with Owen, I slid behind something and watched his response.  As he looked up and didn’t see me, his eyes opened, and he frantically looked around just like Owen had.  As I was about to step out and call Jack’s name, his face suddenly changed.  A slow smile came onto his lips, and his eyebrows raised in surprise and pleasure.  He still looked around, but he was no longer frantic, he was slowly surveying his new realm!

Jack’s head stopped turning, his eyes narrowed, and he took off running.  Straight onto a nearby elevator whose doors were open.  My feet began moving before my brain could even register what was happening.  I jumped onto the elevator right behind him, and scooped him up.  “Oh no you don’t!” I said and he burst out with a surprised and gleeful laugh.

Lesson NOT learned.  (Well, at least for Jack.  Now I was even more worried.  If Jack truly did get separated from me, I could see that he was unlikely to be very concerned about it, and might end up in a very different location than the original place where he became lost.)  Needless to say, I kept quite an eye on him from then on.

I think that it has been about a year from that experience.

Last week, I was at Bellevue Square mall with my friend Lisa and her girls, and my boys.  After we finished eating dinner, and had left the restaurant, Lisa couldn’t find her car keys.  She ran back inside to see if she had left them there.  I stayed outside with the four kids and they ran back and forth in the breezeway of the mall.  I was looking through Lisa’s purse to see if I could find her keys there(I know, stellar parenting…), when I heard Jack crying.  Not his Owen-is-driving-me-nuts-cry but his middle-of-the-night-nightmare-cry. 

Jack and Owen had stepped onto the open elevator that was in the breezeway and the doors had closed.  Owen explained that he, “knew just what to do!  I pressed the ‘Door Open’ button, and the doors opened, and we saw our Mama.”  The elevator had not moved up or down.  The doors had simply closed and opened not really fazing Owen, but Jack was absolutely traumatized.  After several minutes of hugs from me, he climbed right into the stroller and strapped himself in!  He would calm himself down so that his cries were just sharp intakes of air, then burst into tears again when he thought of the incident.  “I need a hug from Sarah!”  he would cry.  And as she hugged him, he would tell her through sobs, “I went on the elevator with not my Mama.”  And again he would calm himself down to nose crying until the incident would creep back into his thoughts.  He hugged and told his story to Sarah, Katie, and Owen in turn – maybe they each had two turns, I can’t remember.

I must admit, I may have been pleased with how the whole event turned out.  It was definitely a learning experience that I wanted Jack to have. (Though I would have liked a little more control in it and hate that my lack of attention – even for those few seconds- was what allowed the experience to occur.)  I am glad he was able to learn it.

 

When I suggested my mom ask Jack about the experience, Jack said, “When I am on an elevator without my Mama, it makes an ‘Oh My Gosh!’ come right into my mouth!”