Run away Gleek
Well, today was my first experience with having a child “run away.”
Patches was tired and needed a nap. This meant that I needed to lie in bed with him and read him a story or two for him to be settled. It only takes about 5 minutes, but they must be quiet and peaceful minutes. Having Gleek in the room interferes with the process because she talks and then requires coaxing to leave. The coaxing almost always reminds Patches that he doesn’t really want to take a nap and I’m back to square one. Today Gleek did not want to have to wait out of the room while I settled Patches. I tried coaxing. I tried offering movies, stories, or computer games. I tried getting firm. Finally I picked her up, put her outside the room and locked the door. Gleek was outraged at this. She howled. She pounded on the door. Finally she announced “I’m Moving!” and all went quiet. I finished reading to Patches. Fortunately today’s stories were short rather than the epic length Dr. Seuss story he usually demands. Then I departed the room with mission accomplished.
Now I had a new problem. Gleek had obviously hidden herself away somewhere. I hadn’t heard the front door, so I thought she was still in the house. I don’t like “hiding from mommy” behaviors, so I knew I needed to craft my response carefully. Most of Gleeks misbehaviors are based in a desire for attention. I considered going to read a book and thus denying her the attention. I knew she would emerge on her own with a different attention seeking behavior. Unfortunately I was not certain she was in the house. It was possible that I’d missed hearing the front door. Leaving The House Without Telling Me is a major infraction of our rules and required different handling than merely Hiding From Mom. I needed to know which I was dealing with. I searched the house. I looked in all the hidey-corners. I called her name. Silence. Gleek is capable of silence, but the house felt truly empty rather than sneaky.
Gleek was plenty mad enough to deliberately break rules, so I considered her leaving the house as pretty likely. This provided me with a quandry. I couldn’t easily go and search for her. Patches was sleeping and I couldn’t leave him alone. Besides I wasn’t sure where to look for her. Would she go to a friend’s house to play? Would she find an outdoor corner and hide? Would she sit on a street corner? This was a new behavior and I didn’t know what shape it would take. Fortunately just as I was beginning to dither, I looked out the front window and saw Gleek on her way home. I had one minute to decide how I was going to react to her reappearance. Asking before leaving the house is a safety rule and I needed to reinforce the importance of it. I also needed to assure Gleek of her value and my love for her since it was an exclusionary event that set this incident off in the first place. I decided that anger had no place in the upcoming conversation. She walked in the door and I scooped her off her feet into a hug. “Where were you?!” I asked in a worried tone. “I looked all over the house and I couldn’t find you and I was scared.” Gleek was a little startled at this, I think she expected an angry confrontation. She and I had a snuggle and talked it all over. Will she ever do it again? I don’t know. Probably. What kids do once, they’re likely to do again. I just know I need to handle it carefully now so that when she’s capable of truly running away, she no longer wants to.
So I guess I’m pretty machiavellian. I consciously craft my responses to behaviors to encourage the ones I like and discourage the ones I don’t. I suppose it is pretty manipulative. I used to be furious at my Dad for the manipulations that he used when I was a teen. I’d be furious because I could see them and they still worked. Now I am a parent and I’m the manipulative one. But I have a whole different view of it. It is my job to teach these little people how to be good, kind, honest, hard working people. It is my job to keep them safe. There are a multitude of tools I can use to achieve those ends; manipulation, anger, scolding, punishing, force, violence, coaxing, bribing…you get the idea. I try to use the right tool for the right job. But more than anything else if I can consciously act rather than merely reacting, then I think I do alright. It may be machiavellian, but it beats screaming and door slamming.