Today I gave my son what I hoped would be a learning experience. We were traveling from Florida back home, which involved two flights. The connection to the second flight was rather tight which means we adults were in a hurry and under stress. Adult concern doesn’t necessarily extend to children though, and this can add to the adult stress which can cause tempers to rise.
My son needed to go to the bathroom—had to go, couldn’t hold it for another second. This need wasn’t something he expressed while on the plane, but it was okay, he could go quickly, he said. And he did and we were making good time to our gate. Only there were people movers, and these are fun things to children. We reminded them to walk while on them, or get to the right, or get ready to get off and turn left and once we even had to remind my son to move forwards, not backwards on the people mover.
But we made the connection with time to spare because it arrived fifteen minutes late, which enabled us to get some lunch we thought we were going to have to miss. Our second flight was a short one. As we left the gate all we had to do was go from the end of the terminal to baggage claim and we were off to our car and home.
My husband was with my daughter and I was with my son. We got on one of the people movers in the relatively calm terminal and I told him to go ahead. He said I should go first because, “ladies first” so I thanked him and went ahead. As I stood on the people mover I turned around to see him walking backwards again, playing games with his backpack and having no interest in a timely arrival at the baggage claim area.
I exited the people mover, caught up with my husband and looked back at my child, now two gates away, and said, “go ahead, I’m going to teach him a lesson.” I got to the escalator to go up to baggage claim, went up and then stood so I could watch for him to come around and notice we weren’t in sight. And I waited.
I waited about five minutes. I wasn’t concerned for his safety, there was no where for him to go. He was going from one end of a secured terminal to where I was. There wasn’t anywhere else to go and no one could have taken him anywhere without passing by where I was waiting.
After waiting another minute or two I went back down the escalator and walked back up the terminal. I saw him standing with two members of security. When they saw me I pointed to my son and they sent him in my direction. I waved my thanks to them.
My son was not happy with me. “You left me!” he told me. I explained that he had not been paying attention and had we exited the terminal without him we wouldn’t be allowed back in without a valid ticket and I don’t know what we would have done. (Which we wouldn’t have done.) He said he wasn’t playing around. I told him airports were places where you needed to pay attention and stay together. I was nice about it, acting very concerned. I told him he would be going to his room to think about what had happened when he got home.
He took my hand, which was rather the last thing I expected him to do, and we had a nice conversation about being home as we caught up to his father and sister. We went over contact information for his parents and where he lived in case he got lost in the future and what flight he had been on and the city we started travel from. I didn’t think any of it was sinking in until we got in the car and his sister wanted to know what had happened. He said, “I don’t want to talk about it!” which meant he was upset about it. Then he asked her if she’d go be in his room with him when we got home. She was happy to, she said.
It was a lesson learned in a safe situation. I hope he remembers it. His sister isn’t likely to wander off because she needs to be near sighted people to navigate in unfamiliar locations, but my son isn’t afraid or timid and sometimes doesn’t pay attention. Maybe he’ll do so more after today.
The Big Boy Update: My mother made soup for us and brought it over for dinner tonight after we arrived home. My son got a bay leaf in his bowl and was rather happy about it. He thought about it for a minute and said, “does it make you lucky in soup too, or is it just pasta?” Normally we have bay leafs in our pasta and my husband says getting it in your bowl means you’re lucky. My son wasn’t sure if luck extended to soup. My mother said she thought getting the bay leaf meant you had to do the dishes.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was glad to get home so she could type on her new smart brailler. I was looking at what she did and I noticed she made a mistake in a letter. I saw her back up and then type another letter. I asked her if she was going to start writing the word over again or use her eraser. I didn’t expect what she told me though. She realized the letter was wrong and then figured the braille letter she meant to do was one additional dot. So she pressed the backspace and added the missing dot (which the brailler spoke as a second letter, confusing me). The dots in the two letters combined to the original letter she meant to type. She understands braille far better than I would have expected her to in Kindergarten.
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