I can think of at least five solid reasons why this is a bad idea.
The most obvious reason concerns the potential for my son to hurt himself. There are at least three reasons that relate back to protecting my “stuff.” The final reason is, I don’t need a mess in the dining room. Of course, if I’m really honest with myself, I’m not worried about my coordinated son tumbling off the table; I mostly want to keep my “stuff” in good shape. Putting the dining room back into pristine shape would be “inconvenient.”
However, when I walked through the dining room and saw this, I recalled the voice of my friend Amber echoing in my head. She’s fond of saying, “You are raising a human being, not dealing with an inconvenience.”
Ouch!
What I realized was this little human being wasn’t being destructive; he was being creative. He wasn’t causing havoc; he was entertaining himself by building a race track from scratch. He wasn’t acting immature; I was.
This time, I caught myself and let the Cars 2 Tokyo Race continue.
I wish my nature was to “say yes” with less effort. I’m still going to try!
January 10, 2012 at 10:00 am
You are thinking exactly what I would have been thinking when your beloved was a small boy and made a whole football field, complete with bleachers and players all out of lego, You could not walk across his bedroom floor but…..in time, he took it apart and went in another direction completely. I was hard for me to not go and tell him to clean up his room so we could at least see a path to his bed but he was so proud of his project! Creativity is a wonderful thing. I just closed the door to his room.
Your admiring mother in law!
January 16, 2012 at 10:52 am
being referenced by you is such a high compliment. xoxo, a
ps – have you booked your summer flight over yet???