Trapped in the Tree.

The posistive reinforcement of receiving a comment so quickly from Sister on the previous post has encouraged me to post again today. (That and I felt the need to record a bit of this morning's performance by B.).

Before I get to recording the behavior of my children for posterity, I do need to make one little note. I have been made aware, again, of just how good and comparatively easy my life is. It makes me very thankful and relieved to realize/remember that God gives us only what we can handle. I also realize that I must be a bit of a weenie. I think I'm ok with that. I just felt a little guilty complaining about the difficulties of taking 3 kids to Wal-Mart after reading about the day/week some others have been having. I am very blessed to have 3 kids that are healthy!!!!

Back to this mornings events:

B. is part monkey. She has always enjoyed climbing things. She has very little fear on playground equipment - even when she was 2 and the equipment was obviously made for much older children. Yesterday she spent the evening jumping from the back of the couch (over the seat) to the floor. Today she climbed into the tree and sat 2 feet off the ground and cried. She could NOT get down. It was impossible. Not doable. In her mind her options were to have me take her out of the tree or to stay in the tree forever. This has happened before. Last time a bug of some sort scared her and she came out of the tree at lightning speed. It's amazing how we can get fixated on one thought/belief and no amount of reasoning can make us see differently. I told her that the tree was lower than the couch. I told her she had jumped out of the tree before and that the only way to learn how to jump out of the tree was to practice etc, etc. (I also reminded her quite a few times that I had told her not to climb the tree unless she could get herself down - this has always been the rule)
Four-year-olds can not always be reasoned with - so I had a dilemma. Do I help her out of the tree because she is afraid and Mom's are supposed to be rescuers?? Or do I make her do it (with some guidance) because she CAN do it and just needs to learn to calm down and make the effort??

Well, I don't know that we learned anything - but I stood in front of her and gave her the option of jumping to me (she would also land on the ground with her feet because she really was just not very high). She refused to jump to me - she wanted only to be rescued. So I grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the tree (this sounds a lot more violent than it actually was). In my mind it was a compromise of sorts - I helped her do it. She, however, thinks I am mean for pulling her out of the tree and insisted she had all sorts of 'owwwies.' (She had two little scrapes - the sort that are white and disappear after a few minutes..).

It is very hard to know, in my opinion, how much of B.'s fearful behavior was caused by her love of drama and how much is actual fear. I do know that she is very prone to giving up on anything she thinks might not be able to do - so in my mind the tree problem was a manifestation of that behavior. I may have a bit of a perfectionist on my hands!!

Anyway - all that to say that I found it rather amusing that my little daredevil refused a jump that, for her, is usually just routine.