Walk The Line

Joy is now 16 months old. Pretty soon she will be 2, and soon thereafter 18. She is growing more and more every day. She is learning sounds, making them words and we can actually communicate with her using intelligent language. She does not have a very wide range of words at her disposal but she knows the basics, like "eat, milk, more, done" and maybe even "sleep", although we're not 100% certain of that one. We started teaching her sign language, assigning physical motions to words. How fascinating it is to see a person who has only been alive (and by that I mean out of the womb, I'm not trying to start an argument about when life begins) for exactly 441 days, 20 hours, 2 minutes and 32 seconds, give or take learn language. The ability to communicate in an intelligent manner is, in my opinion, one of the things that separates us from primordial ooze.

I can tell when she is trying to tell me something but doesn't know how. I can see in her eyes as she gestures toward something or someone and babbles something that has meaning only to her. I so want to know what's on her mind. I want to hear what she has to say because I'm assuming it's profound. She is curious, eager to learn, and will stop at nothing to touch, to see and to do. Her brain is a sponge, soaking in every little detail of every little thing and every experience, for better or worse.

Sometimes learning can be painful, and sometimes that is good. Joy had a painful experience recently that stands out in my mind. She got too close to one of those oil filled electric radiator space heaters recently. By "she got too close" I really mean "I let her get too close". She actually touched it. Those things are meant to be used around the home, so they are fairly safe, as in they don't get excessively hot. But they do get hot. She did not sustain any injury of any sort but she felt enough heat to sting her hand, and cause pain. There were a few tears, and the event was over almost before it began, but it left a mark on my heart and her Grandfather's also, who was also there. I know the grown ups hurt much more than she did.

It is my job as a parent to protect. It is also my job to teach. How is she going to learn "hot" without experiencing it? How can someone lean the color blue who has only seen red? the answer is the same for both. Not very effectively. At some point, she will have to take my word for it, that something is bad for her or she should stay away or what have you. Caustic chemicals come to mind as something she is going to have to trust me on. I'm not going to let her touch battery acid to learn it's not a good thing, but then again, she won't come into contact with battery acid very much at least for the next several years. But she is close to heat sources every day, and we have to draw the line somewhere.

Where is that line? Its probably different for every parent. For us, we want her to experience everything in life she can without getting hurt. Too badly.