Mommy Milestone

We had a first at our house this week: Carden wanted to run away from home. First let me explain that Tyler was in Japan all week, which means the kids were stuck with Mommy Jekyll and Hyde. I find that when I'm solo parenting, I tend to be super fun (pizza for dinner, steady stream of rented movies) or super disciplinarian (short fuse, no patience, extra-long resting time, no bedtime stories). I had to take everyone to run off some copies at Kinkos and Carden kept causing problems, despite there being a toy area for kids.


Once we got back in the car I let him have it. "I was going to let you play Nintendo (his favorite thing in the world) tonight," I snapped, "but now you've lost that chance." He didn't say anything until we got home, then sat down with a paper and pen and wrote his letter of resignation. "Mom I am going to run away" with sad picture of himself on the right and the Nintendo DS on the left.


I'm not sure what you're supposed to do in situations like this, but I figured hysterical laughter was probably not the right response. I think I said something like, "I'll go get the mail and then we'll talk about it." When I got to the mailbox, I saw he'd put his coat on and was heading for the sidewalk. "I'm going to Jordan's house."


"Do you know where Jordan lives?" I asked.


"Then I'm going to Alex's house," he announced.


"Do you know where Alex lives?"


"I'm going to Jacob's house."


Oops. He knew where Jacob lived, so I needed a new response, again, probably not the laughter I was fighting back. I convinced him to come back inside; I really was tempted to see how far he'd go, but it was 20 degrees outside and we live on a busy street that he's not allowed to walk on by himself.


We went back in and he wrote this letter:

"Mom I will go to Jacob's house with [Nintendo] DS" (drawing of DS on the left, scary monster--probably me--on the right.

I finally convinced him that he would be much happier at home and that if he were willing to clean the entire playroom without my help he could regain his Nintendo priviledges. Gotta give him credit--it took 45 minutes, but he did it.

Good thing Dad comes back soon. Maybe I'll take the DS and go to Jacob's house.