Wednesday, June 2, 2010

My Little Velociraptor

I am proud of Haley when she learns something new.  It is a great achievement for her, things don't come as easily for her as they do for other children. We rejoice over any advancements Haley makes, but sometimes there are things we don't want her to learn.

There are times that I want to keep her in the dark about certain things.  Take for example the child locks we still have on several cabinets around the house.  We really don't want her to get in to those cabinets.  We have to be careful when we open them so that she doesn't see how it is done.  I have taken to calling her my little Velociraptor.  If you have seen Jurassic Park you know what I am talking about.  They learn.  It can be quite scary.

I was never excited for her to learn how to unlock and open any of the doors in our house, especially those that lead to the great outdoors.  When Haley was a baby we would hold her up to the garage door opener and ask her to push the glowing red button.  Eventually she got tall enough to reach it. Even now we like to let her open and close the garage door for us because it makes her feel useful (I am guessing) and because we usually have our hands full.  Back when she was five or six she also learned how to open the door to the garage from the house, which I really wasn't aware of until it was too late. 

The doorbell rang once when I was upstairs.  I came down and opened the door to find Haley standing there with our neighbor's son from down the street.  He told me he saw Haley wandering down by his house and he didn't see me so he thought he should bring her back home.  You can't begin to imagine how I lavished praise onto that kid.  After he left I sat down and balled my brains out.  We almost got to the point of putting an alarm on all of the doors and maybe we should have, but instead I just became more vigilant and she hasn't done it again.

This last weekend was a three day weekend which meant that the four of us were together in the house for three days.  I should say the five of us because Shadow was also in the house - he doesn't like to go outside.  He was being his usual curmudgeon self though and not sitting still on the girl's laps.  At one point Big Sis decided he was going outside whether he liked it or not.  He hissed at her the entire time but she eventually got him out the door.  We always lock the doors even when we are home so she locked the door after him.  A little while later I came around the corner and there he was sitting in the entryway looking all innocent.  I swear if he could talk he would have said "Haley did it."  So yeah, Haley can unlock the front door and open it.  Oh joy.

Haley likes to let Shadow out of "his room" and he likes to wander the house looking for places to spray.  It puts me over the edge so my husband decided to put a lock on the door to the laundry room on Saturday.  That put my mind at ease. 

I soon learned that it was a false sense of security that I was enjoying.  Come Monday morning Haley had figured out how to unlock that door.  I quizzed the rest of the family and no one fesses up to teaching her how to unlock it or to even to letting her see how over their shoulders.  She did it all on her own. 

In case you are wondering I didn't say "Good Job!"

1 comment:

  1. This makes me laugh because I can relate. Sometimes when Elijah is getting into trouble, I want to praise him...put I don't. And he'd live outside if I let him. I'm scared about the time he learns to open doors. I think we'll be in trouble!

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