Oct
5
Dylan has started leaving his room in the morning before I wake up, which is something I have no experience in dealing with. Today he was in his brother’s room and they were happily playing together, but I can imagine more nefarious outcomes of Dylan’s early-hour wanderings. Like the fact that he knows how to open the front door, say. I’m not sure what the right solution is, though. Locking his door seems bad, or at least it seems like one of those parenting things you’d never admit to actually doing (even if you do) (like allowing your kid to eat fish sticks 4 days a week) (which of course does not happen at our house as my children subsist exclusively on locally-produced sustainably-harvested organic HA HA HA I CAN’T EVEN FINISH THAT SENTENCE).
Maybe I should just grease his doorknob, therefore making it difficult for him to escape while not technically locking him inside.
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On the subject of challenging toddler stages, I have a new potty training post up. It’s a video, and I had a terrible time recording it and had to edit out about a thousand “UHHHHs” and weird tangents and I’m fairly horrified at how I look and sound but anyway: video posted, come by if you want to laugh at me.
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That leads me to the last thing on my mind this morning, which is sponsorships and paid blogging and all that crap. I’ve been seeing a resurgence of talk about Selling Out and how we need to Charge What We’re Worth or We’ll All Going to Die in a Fire. Here’s what I suggest for every blogger who’s all worked up over this topic: learn how to set a fee. There’s a great freelance book that walks you through the process of determining your expenses, evaluating the work, and figuring out what kind of rate you should charge. Then you can do this crazy thing called minding your own business—and I mean that in the literal sense rather than the snarky one—and no one else’s arrangements need bother you at all. I don’t believe that having variety in the market devalues anyone’s potential. If anything, it makes room for very inexperienced people who wouldn’t have a shot otherwise.
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I just posted about my fear of my daughters leaving their bedroom… http://www.taooftwins.com/2010/08/cowards.html
Loved the video!
I have a friend that locks her son in his room for timeouts because he completely wigs out…and she can’t keep him in a time out. Kind of always creeped me out. And when we first bought our house…there was a lock on the outside of one of the bedroom doors. Again kind of creepy. Besides the scary omg my child is trapped in his room and the house is burning down dreams I would have. The lock high on the front door is a good one. That worked for us. Also our alarm system has a chime feature you can set so when the door opens it makes this completely annoying buzzer sound. But it would wake me up if our kid went out the front door. (And he used to…regularly. Even made it across the street to the playground which made me shake and cry and totally freak out)
Good luck!
I wasn’t really paying attention to the whole blogger/freelancer “sell yourself short” thing, but I was curious and took a look at the writeup for that book. And it got me thinking: I do a LOT of web pages for free or for very minimal grant money (nonprofits). I’ve been told that I’m screwing things up for the $80/hour web consultants and designers by giving away the similar services. I noticed that book makes mention of ‘whether you’re a writer or a web guru.’ But also that it’s a book aimed at women. Do we (women) tend to do more gratis or cheap-labor type work? Is it because we’re generous or not confident enough to really charge $ and compete?
And now I’m trying to decide if I need to put the hammer down and charge real/appropriate fees for web freelance work. Hm.
Loved the potty training video… you made me giggle :)
When my youngest was in the 2-3 range he would also wake up and wander, so we ended up putting two baby gates up in the doorway one on top of the other. The boy is a climber and this seemed to slow him down. The key was two different types of gates and no gap between them because he could pop them out of the doorframe if there was enough of a gap. The child-proof doorknob covers were useless as well with him because he could pry those suckers off. He’s the fun one. :)
When my daughter was about 2 1/2 we had the same problem – we wound up getting a door alarm from Radio Shack. It was attached to her bedroom door and then the sensor was in our room and whenever she would open the door it would chime to let us know. This worked wonderfully for us. Hope it helps.
I’m sure someone has said this, but we use those door knob covers that just spin when little hands try to turn them. We put one on the inside side of his door and he hasn’t gotten out in the year or so it’s been on. He plays in his room or fusses for us to come get him. My son is about Dylan’s age and quite the escape artist, so I’m happy that this works.
We installed the plastic safety cover on the doorknob on the inside of our son’s door the first time he climbed out of his crib. But then, he only did that twice, so we weren’t incented to get him out of cribland early. When we moved him to a Big Boy Bed earlier this year (at 3.5), he (broke my heart when he) asked if we could take the cover off the knob. We did as part of the Big Boy Bed Agreement.
He definitely pushes that particular envelope when he doesn’t want to nap or go to sleep, but we always hear when he opens his door (either on the monitor or when we wake up – his bedroom is across the hall). (Usually, he heads right into our room in the morning – no sneaking around.) Right now, we’re encouraging him to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, if need be. We still have the safety cover on the back door and deadbolts everywhere else, so I’ve never been afraid he’ll leave the house.
Considering it takes adults a ton of arm strength to open our front and back doors (they frequently think they are locked), I’m not too worried about our little dude escaping into the great unknown, but if the doors are open, he has figured out how to open the screen doors. Stinker. He is *this* close to figuring out how to open his bedroom door. He can open it from the outside, but not the inside. Yet. I’m counting the days and already have knob covers on standby.
Doorknob cover! Gwen can get out of her bed and turn the light on, which is bad enough, but she can’t get out of her room. This does not prevent her from banging on the inside of her door at 5am and demanding to be let out, though.
Two suggestions…..
1) see if Dylan will agree to stay in his room (he can play….QUIETLY), until you or JB get out of bed (this is what my mom did with me).
OR
2) If you think wandering out the door is a serious possibility, consider putting a deadbolt lock high up on the door. You only lock it at night to keep Dylan safe (I had a client who had to do this with her very intrepid daughter).
Good luck, it only gets worse….really….I’m not kidding. The teenaged years will make you consider military school.
I used the doorknob covers and those horrible alarm things that you can get in the childproofy section of the store. They come in a pack of like, 4, and they have two pieces each. One side sticks to the doorframe and one sticks to the door with a sticky adhesive. When the connection is broken they let out this ungodly screech that will (1) scare the crap out of anyone in your home &/or neighborhood and (2) alert you that an escape is taking place. I had to give up on them eventually because I kept almost having a heart attack, but they definitely work.
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