PPC day ninety three: Truman's Zen garden

It's easy for me to write off my child as wild and give up on trying to take him outdoors.

Last Friday we went out around 2 and did not make it back until 6:30. That story is for another post, but was fresh in my mind when Truman asked to go play in his sandbox today.

We don't have a fence so this leaves him open to the world, which in that other post I am going to write is a great thing even if it means more work or worry for me.

But I am learning not to worry.

The thing about my willful child is if I chase him he will run.

This is either because he thinks I am playing a game or because I am putting out the expectation that I think he will run. I am not extending trust and he won't exert the energy it takes to return that trust by staying in a safe radius of where we are.

Today I sat still while he ran and asked him not to go too far.

And he didn't.

While he was playing in the sand I had several more revelations about his behaviors. When I watch him playing calmly — which is to say in control of his behavior, not so much that he is quiet or still, but isn't frantic — I realize that getting him to a place where he is willing to cooperate means guarding him from the activities that lead him to be out of control.

Lots of young children need protection from dangers — from climbing too high, using sharp objects, from the cold, or stairs, or hot things — my eldest son is not like this.

He has a good sense of natural consequences but no innate desire to follow rules. He is fiercely independent and self sufficient.

When he was born I was expecting a baby. I was expecting someone to protect, to guide, to journey with. I am doing these things with him, but it has taken me this long to really see what it is he needs protecting from.

I think it is with simple activities — with slopes of sand, splashes of water and thoughtful building with blocks — that this child finds peace within himself.

And so his sandbox is his little Zen garden.

And it is when he is in these places that I become aware and find my own understandings about who he is and what he needs. It is in these moments that we communicate quietly and without words what we need and find a common ground on which to stand.

I think, too, that having a baby that is what I expected a baby to be, needing protection from the cold, loud, crazy world, I realize that Truman isn't just sloughing off these feelings. He doesn't have them.