That’s the world my daughter lives in with the small difference in that she has a very tiny bit of vision that tells her when things are looming in front of her—but not always in time to prevent running into them. For instance, a large, dark trash can on the road she’d see, but the pole for a street sign she wouldn’t, and unfortunately it’s the latter that’s the more painful one to collide with.
My daughter is happy and energetic and friendly and most of all energetic. But she can’t run. Or to be more specific, she won’t run. She has been hurt so many times she is very cautious when it comes to moving fast—because the faster you’re moving, the more it hurts when you hit something.
She will run, but in small bursts like running down the side yard to get to the play set or down the hall to the steps. But she’s never really able to do that, “carefree” running children do so much of the time in their childhoods.
Lately she’s been asking if she could run. This morning while on vacation we were walking four blocks to get donuts and my daughter wanted to run. We were on the sidewalk and it wasn’t perfectly even and there were driveways and inconsistent hedges, rocks and grass all along on both sides. But she knew it was a sidewalk and she wanted so very badly to run.
I told her it was safe for her to run. And she started this hesitant, cautious shuffle run with her hand out in front of her face to protect her. Initially she would wander off to the left or right but fairly quickly got better at staying on the sidewalk.
She and I came up with a plan (since she was ahead of me and not being guided by my arm). She would listen for the sounds of cars which would indicate she was close to the next cross street. I would tell her, “okay, stop” when she was close and then we’d cross the street together.
She did this all the way to and from the bakery. Then when we went to the beach later in the day she wanted to run again. She was more confident and didn’t hold her hand in front of her, knowing I’d yell stop if she was getting close to something. That arm down by her side also gave her a more even stride, even though she was still holding back some on speed and confidence.
When we came home from the beach she was running from the start to the end of the block and stopping herself shortly before the intersection (just before I was about to tell her to stop). She was so happy running. I need to get her in a mowed grass field somewhere and see how much speed she can put on without the fear of injury.
The Big Boy Update: My son wasn’t listening today. He was also aggravating his sister intentionally. His sister was complaining about everything. Oh, and she wasn’t listening either. So I snapped. I yelled and I grabbed their arms and drug them down the steps so we could finally get going to the beach. My son wasn’t happy at me at this point either so he wanted to walk with dad. A few minutes later my husband came back to me and said my son just told him, “mommy may be pretty, but her attitude is far from pretty—way far from pretty.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and I were on the deck at my brother- and sister-in-law’s house today. She had just come out and asked me, “is Taylor out here?” Taylor is the dog. I thought I heard her behind the table and looked through the chairs and saw her tail. And then she was gone. Gone, from the second story deck—suddenly. And then I saw it: they had installed a dog door flap at the other end of the sliding doors. So I showed my daughter. Would you like to guess who spent the next fifteen minutes climbing in and out of the dog door?
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