Toby is exercising his new found ability to climb! In the last 2 days we have found him on top of nearly every piece of furniture under 6 foot high, and the roof of our little tykes ute. He loves the ute and can happily play on it for hours. Unfortunately since discovering he can climb on the roof of it, the roof is his favourite part.
No matter how vigilant a parent is, it is impossible to keep an eye on everything a child is doing. To be honest, I don’t watch everything the kids are doing (particuarly the girls) because I want them to learn to be independent and not always rely on someone else to solve their problems. I guess I am attempting to be a free range parent.
Let me qualify this by saying there is no way I let my 14 month old go outside unsupervised (on the farm he likes to eat sheep poo!), but I believe in letting kids learn from mistakes, and allowing them to have the occasional bump and scratch.
Toby however is testing the strength of our convictions. Today he rolled down the outside stair (only 3 steps) when the Country Boy had his back turned. We have been teaching him to crawl down backwards, but every now and then he forgets and turns around… and he has a bump on his head to show for it (CB feels awful and won’t let me take a photo of Toby until its better :(). I really do not want to have to carry him up and down the stairs or block the stairs off when we are outside, but I was having second thoughts… until about an hour ago.
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| Off to explore! |
I was sitting on the steps when Toby crawled over, turned around backwards, said “back back” and proceeded to crawl backwards down the stair.
Falls and bumps are a normal part of childhood, and today Toby showed me that he had learnt something from his bump. I’m continuing to be free range!
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