A little information fire cracker!

                Yesterday this mama had to get away from sitting in the house thinking, it was mandatory to do with the way life was coming at me. My oldest son went to a movie with grandma and my daughter and I went to Ross to shop around for a while. There are times you stop somewhere and you worry how you’re going to get in and out without a public display with the little guy. Most times actually but yesterday I made up my mind my daughter was going to get all the time in the world she wanted and the little one was going to get the same.

                It was a busy place and that is never a good thing but I told my daughter to go do her thing and we would just wander around. Now, Phillip doesn’t wander anymore, he sprints and while he is going top speed he is actually taking it all in. We spent over an hour at full sprint in Ross going around and around stopping for just a moment every once in a while to touch something interesting. Being that it was a busy day I had to weave through the crowd and try and keep up. He just flies right through finding those tiny openings while mom is trying to keep up. I find it kind of amazing some of the spaces he can slip through because it shows just how much attention he is paying to the environment he is in.

                What happens when a mother is chasing a child in circles through a store at top speed? Society happens. The looks as your flying by are all very different and come at you as good and bad. One person might giggle and say “he is a quick one!” while another person might stare with disgust at your parenting. Or lack of parenting is really what they believe is happening. They wonder why you just let your child run and you don’t stop him and they don’t see one thing cute about what is happening that is for sure. Then you have people who try to speak to him and he is totally unaware. He won’t respond but if by chance he does it’s not a verbal response they expect. They get confused by him and aren’t totally sure what is happening. I have seen kids out in public with Ipad in hand which has been recommended to me and I have tried it. Even the magic of Steve Jobs can’t turn the world down, something I wonder if Steve jobs himself could have related to. I also don’t want him glued to a screen so we leave the technology home.

                Phillips energy level is something people don’t understand at all. That energy level has a big affect on things we do and places we go because the reality is he can’t slow down. He has no concept of sitting when there are things to explore. He will sometimes follow but to get him to do it is unpredictable and a big job. He might have a day he follows me through a store but both him and I have the spent the entire time making that happen. If he runs a few feet and turns around that is a huge accomplishment but it’s also a constant battle to get it to happen. If I say his name and he comes back, society views him as a behaving and I just want to hug him and say “you did it!” It has nothing to with behaving and everything to do with grasping the ability to control what he is doing.

                I can’t take him a restaurant and put a kid’s meal with crayons in front of him because those crayons are nothing compared to what is happening all around him. He cannot block any of it out and his little body responds just as much as his mind does. At home he appears to be very calm, most of the time and can control himself but home is full of things he took in a long time ago. He is like a little information firecracker! The fuse is the energy level and once he has taken in too much he might crack. Yesterday the opposite happened. He ran and ran even until his legs started to argue with him to the point he had lay down on the ground like he was planking to power up. I can’t even tell the looks people get when he is doing this and I am not freaking out for him to stand up like a proper young man. Yesterday was a bit of a breakthrough for him because all of a sudden he turned around and reached up to me. He was exhausted and just wanted me to get him off his feet. I picked him up and he laid his head on my shoulder for the rest of the time in the store all the way to the van.

                It’s a moment that almost never happens because he cracks before this ever comes. I end up having to carry him out with extreme protest because he can’t grasp the ability to know…that’s enough. Holding him with his little head on my shoulder was a moment he knew it was enough and didn’t crack. It doesn’t happen often but when it does I know he won a battle and I make sure to hug him and tell him “you did it” and he will do it again.