Walk away

Today I did something that really scared me.   What heroic thing did I do? Well, I walked the opposite direction my son wanted to go. From a lady who has been bitten by a lion and holds live raptors for a living, how scary could walking away from a toddler be? TERRIFING!

  Within the first two minutes of our hike he wanted to go back to the car.  He stood on top of a large boulder and screamed a non-sense word at me over and over as I tried to encourage him to come with me down the trail. With every step I took towards him, he took two steps away. He wanted me to chase him, and he wanted to be the one in control. Normally, I fall into that because I am scared. I am petrified he will walk out into traffic, I am scared he will get lost, and I am worried that I wont have enough speed to catch up to him before he hurts himself.

I held my breath and prayed that my tactic with my renegade toddler would work.  I said the ageless words that all wise mothers and teachers of toddlers have used, "see you later, I am going this way." And I started walking with my back facing him, not looking over my shoulder. I was so frightened that he would dart away but in fact he fell for the trap, like most children do, and called to me almost instantly "I coming too." I made an audible exhale.  I kept walking and he kept shouting "coming, I coming."   The rest of the hike he hung close by and had so many questions about what he was seeing.

The rest of the walk he was so engaged and creative.  I was thrilled.  Imagination is just starting to show up in his day to day life, and when he found a stick and held it up in the air and said "I fireman" I just beamed.

He also was very intrigued by the few leaves that hag fallen off the trees.  He bent down and touched them all.  "Wow" and by the end of the walk he was using the word "leaf" like an expert. We also identified a few different species of animal by their scat.  On several other hikes I have shown him the plant that he was named after, he never seemed to care, but today he was proud to touch the three lobed leaves and shout his own name.

On our walk there were a lot of boulders that were fun to climb upon but also there was fuzzy lichen growing on most of them. He loved touching it and finding other rocks and shouting "More."

Another magical moment was when I asked him to walk quietly and we might see a deer. And he started to tip toe and say "shh quiet" in a sweet whisper and an actual deer jumped up and ran across the path!