Have They Gone Too Far?

From time to time we’ve gone “around the block” with our children.   Initially, it was in a stroller when they were babies—a time when they just went along for the ride.   When they got older, we did walks around the block and more recently we’ve gone on bike rides with them.

For the latter two of those treks we would commonly have to turn back (it’s about a half-mile) because the children were tired and wanted to go home.   If we had made it half-way around already, the remainder of the trip typically involved a lot of comments such as, “I’m tired” and “carry me”.

More recently they’ve been interested in riding their bikes—our blind child has good peripheral vision and can navigate quite well.   Mostly though they like to ride up and down on our short street consisting of eleven houses, ending in a cul-de-sac.   Because traffic is low and almost all the families  on our street have two or more children, it’s relatively safe for our children to spend time out front unattended or loosely monitored by adults.

Yesterday I was inside and heard Keira, who is almost nine-years-old and quite responsible, calling out for me.   By the time I got to the front to find out what they wanted the children had managed to get their bikes out of the garage and their helmets on without adult assistance.   My children still choose to use their balance bikes as their pedal bikes are a bit tall for them.   That, and they love their balance bikes, not being bothered by the additional work it takes from them to propel themselves along.

I told the three of them to be careful and have fun and if they needed anything to let me know.    About a half-hour later they came into the house, hot and sweaty, and informed me Morgan wasn’t home because she didn’t answer her door when they knocked.  

I masked my surprise, saying them their favorite sitter, Morgan, had left for the lake this morning.   What had they just done?  They’d gone half-way around the block by themselves to get to Morgan’s house.   Finding her absent, they came back home.   They did the trip with ease and apparently without complaint (Morgan has a dog and two cats they had wanted to play with.)

Historically, I’ve told many, many people that we don’t worry if our children are out of sight, because there are only two places they have interest in going: the house next door to play with Madison and Whitaker or the house behind ours to play with Rayan and Keira.    It seems now they have a third place they might go, which changes the situation.

I’m going to have a conversation with them about going to visit Morgan and her brother Tristan (another favorite sitter) without talking to us about it first.    They are careful to look and listen for cars before crossing the street and Morgan’s house is only about five houses away if they walk between houses, but I do think it should be something planned out and facilitated by adults at this age.

The Big Boy Update:  We’re working on an understanding of money with my son.   He commonly asks me to look up on my iPad, “Name of Thing He’s Currently Obsessed With” so he can look for toys related to it to put on his wish list.   He has a knack for finding the things that are the biggest and therefore the most expensive.   He seems to really like things costing $149.99 or higher.    Today he asked me about two expensive things and then came back with something only $14.99.   I told him that was reasonable to put on his wish list and did he want to count out the money he’s earned for helping around the house.    I spent some time with him counting coins and me tallying up totals.   He’s got $5.71 and now has more incentive to help for money.   He asked me if the dishes needed putting up yet?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is upstairs making me a necklace.   She has a firm length of plastic cording and some very large beads with big holes to string onto it.   She isn’t frustrated but I can tell you I would be if it took me as long to find the bead hole as it does her.   Mostly she does it by feel, as we think her close vision is very poor.    It’s hard to tell what’s good and what’s bad visually with her, but she’s still trying and doing the best with the vision she has.