Parents Fear

When my son was starting to learn to walk he became very independent, he didn't want his momma to hold his little hand. One day we were at Wal-mart, my mom, Joshua, and myself and we were getting ready to check out. I reached Joshua's hand out to mom and in the seconds between switching hands he was off like a bat out of hell.

I didn't realize that a two year old could get away so fast. My heart dropped into my stomach and fear reared it's ugly head when after a couple of minutes we couldn't locate him.. It was a very small wal-mart so there wasn't to many places he could have gotten off to.

I started running through the store, yelling at the staff to lock all doors and not let anyone out because my son was missing. People looked at me like I was crazy, I was I must say at the time, with the thoughts of my son being kidnapped.

We had been teaching Joshua hide and seek, he loved to play it, even at two it was one of his favorite things to do. Unknown to us at the time that is what he was doing playing hide and seek. By now the whole staff was looking for him and I was crying and my mother was frantic and I had just about decided to have a break down when a faint little laugh came from the women's department. We started the hunt and after a few minutes located Joshua in the center of a circular rack full of women's clothes. All I could do in that moment was grab him up and hug him. When that started wearing off, I wanted to give his little bottom a good spanking, but realized, that in the rituals of teaching my child the childhood games like hide and seek, I never realized what dangers could come from that.

While this isn't the case all the time, and I am sure it hardly happens, it made me reflect on how young should we start playing these kinds of games with our children. It was just a thought after going through this with him.

He has survived into teenage years and now the games we play are far more complicated because the thoughts of detaching and reattaching his head comes into thought at times. The grounded for life game doesn't seem to work, but he does have the eye rolling game down pack.
Ah life is great.