Let?s play a game of “Is this dangerous?” I?ll give you an example of some activities that my son likes to do and I am still waffling on wether or not I should let him do it.
Game #1:
One night my son found a 2? long by 1/4″ thick dowel. He may have believed that it was a very long magic wand. So I let him play with it. He didn?t seem to be hurting anything. CS let him play with it for a while until he did an activity (I don?t remember what) with it and then CS took it away. Of course this resulted in a tantrum. I will say that the dowel is not out anymore because I am pretty sure that was dangerous. However this is the same kid that thought a little hard straw was the neatest thing since sippy cups when we were in Russia. And we only had one incident of him shoving it into the roof of his mouth.
Game #2:
There is an oak Shaker rocking chair in the boy?s room. It is one of my prized possesions as it was a wedding gift. I made a special cushion for it to match the window treatment in the boy?s room and he really does like to rock in it. He has figured out how to get into every single chair in our house except the rocking chair. That was until today. I put him in the chair and made it rock. He really liked this. Then I was doing the dishes in the kitchen when I heard his bedroom door shut. I go in and he has figured out how to get in the rocking chair and is trying to make it rock. I watch as he gets out of the chair and it looks ok. Then I watch him climb back into the chair and holy cow does he have to tip it really far forward to get in. Should I let him continue to climb into the chair or is it dangerous?
I realize that I am asking for lots of advice to a bunch of people I don?t even know. But you know hey… it makes for something to write about. And along those lines I want to thank all of you for your words of wisdom about the rocking. I think we are working toward a plan around here. Naptime went great today. We did our routine; I gave him a kiss and left the room. He rocked for about 5 minutes and fell asleep. At one point he woke up during his nap, rocked a little and fell back to sleep. We?ll see if that works at bedtime.
In other news we did find a disturbing orphanage behavior that I am not too thrilled about. The boy is traumatized by any food on the floor. Not the way I have seen other children react to food on the floor. If he is in his chair at meal time and accidentally drops food on the floor he says uh-oh and then becomes fixated on it until one of us picks it up. Now the wierd part is this afternoon he was handing me his soup bowl because he was done with it, but there was still soup in it. I accidentally dropped it spewing tomato soup from here to kingdom come. Oh it was so not pretty. Well the boy sees this and pitches a fit. Like a scared crying fit. Like I am going to hurt him or yell at him for dropping the soup. Even after the soup is all cleaned up he is still crying. We tried to reassure him that it wasn?t him that dropped it, but me. Didn?t work. It makes me wonder what the caregivers did if the kids dropped their food on the floor. Scary.’, ‘Is this dangerous?