This Happened Sooner than I Thought it Would!

Only eleven days ago I commented that Samuel was not yet trying to escape our yard, but it has happened, he is trying to wander off! Not only that, while we were at the park Wednesday he ran away. He surprised us by running to a place that he had never gone before. After almost six years of going to the same park, there have been one or two places that he tends to wander towards, but this time he went in a completely different direction. He has also become capable of running very fast. We have plans of attending the park regularly this summer but now we are going to have to re-strategize a bit so that we can be there safely. Due to complications that occurred when I delivered Samuel I am not able to run and he is now capable of running fast enough that he gives our in-home helpers a challenge.

Taking time off from going to the park to re-strategize wouldn't bother me, but this is one of the only regular chances that his brothers have to see their friends. Another way of looking at it is that we should keep going and immediately deal with this problem. Samuel was very aware that he had done something wrong on Wednesday. We tried not to talk about it with him very much but he was still making comments like "I made you upset." This morning he made the comment "While I am at school I am going to run outside." I called his teacher and gave them a warning about this. I was glad to see that he did not attempt to run away as I walked him into school.

At home we have a fenced-in yard. As the weather warms up and my husband starts working in the garage, however, the boys like to join him and this area of our house is not fenced in. In the last couple days he has tried to wander from the places that he is allowed to be outside of the fence. Samuel's older brother and younger brother can be trusted to wander freely in our yard, and even go visit our neighbors, but this is not the case with Samuel. It will be difficult to enforce the different levels of "freedom" that they have. What will Samuel think of this?!

This is another time I'll be referring to my social stories book to see how it might be best to approach this. In the meantime we have placed a bolt on the gate of our fence. He might be able to remove it, but it would take him long enough that he couldn't easily escape. I am also looking into getting some extra help with him.

Welcome Break from the Afternoon Grumpies

Early yesterday afternoon a friend called me and said that a group of people was going to meet at the park. I told her that we wouldn't be going because I thought it was going to be too wet. I knew that it had gotten quite warm outside but I honestly didn't realize just how nice it really was until we left the house to get Samuel. Of course I didn't tell the other boys about the invitation that I had declined because they would have been beyond disappointed!

After we picked Samuel up and were on the way home my car just decided that it was going to steer itself over towards the park! My oldest son had his nose in a book so he didn't notice the different route we were driving, but my youngest son picked right up on it and started saying "where are we going?" "let's go to the park!" Sometimes I do drive that route so we can see how high a particular creek is running, so I'm sure the boys wondered what I was up to. At the last second I said "okay, let's see who might be at the park" and I turned in. Our friends were there and my boys were very happy to know we would be staying a while.

A group of us has gathered together, as weather has permitted, at this park for 5 1/2 years now. We call it "play group", and it has been fun to have the kids get together. This is also vital gathering time for the moms too! Our families have grown considerably over the years and the ages of the children playing are from the early teen years down to newborns. Sometimes just one or two families are there and other times there can be as many as maybe 8 - 10 or even more families (usually in the summertime when we gather more regularly).

Our ability to go to play group has been limited the past year and a half because of Samuel's uncooperativeness. He started wandering off from the field where we gather. There is a creek nearby that Samuel is attracted to and I don't like to take any chances. We did not go very much last spring between that and our baby being so young. This summer and fall we had an in-home helper on the day we go to the park so we were able to attend regularly. I took a big chance by going to the park yesterday without an in-home helper. I put my oldest son on notice that I may need his help and I spent the entire time watching Samuel like a hawk. I also told them we would only stay for 45 minutes.

It didn't even hit me until we got back home, but Samuel did better than I could have even imagined! He did walk around the edges of the play area most of the time (he told me later that he was playing "Daytona 500") but he kind of hung out for a short while with the other children who were having races. Never once did he wander from the play area and best of all he did not expect to take a walk over to another area of the park as he usually does with our helper. I took a few minutes to help Samuel jump on something in the playground area, and I was able to help my youngest son on the swing for a few minutes too. It was great to talk with my friends for a few minutes too, the bad weather has kept us from getting together as regularly as we had been last fall and early winter.

We ended up staying for an hour and a half, the boys all accepted leaving nicely (I "counted down" before time to leave), and Samuel's good mood lasted most of the evening!

A great day all around for the boys!