Say you have a child who dislikes change. Say you spend 3 days of running around, shopping, moving around the normal household items and routines and *then* say you travel for 3 days. You spend 3 days completely away from home asking your child to travel, play with strangers, participate in tests and practice patience, of which he has *none*. Then say you finally get home. You’re back in your own space with your own stuff and your own dogs. What on earth should you do to celebrate this return to much needed normalcy??
How about you tear apart your child’s room? You put his bed into the basement for storage, you remove all of his clothes from his dresser and put the dresser in the dining room so it’s out of the way. You tear apart your room and move your bed into his room, realize that his new bigger bed won’t work in the same spot so you completely rearrange the layout to accomodate the dresser you’re adding too. Then move all his clothes into the new dresser, slap some brand spanking new sheets on the bed and call it a night. What do you think would happen next?
Would you believe that your child, who dislikes change, would jump happily into his new bed and only get out long enough to turn off his light?
Yeah, I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t witnessed it Thursday night after we got home from Madison. He did wake up briefly in the middle of the night and came to find us resting, uncomfortably, on the sofa bed in the living room. He went straight back to his room though and went to sleep again.
I think he just came out to laugh at us in our misery…
that’s so funny, melissa! good for caleb for handling it all like a champ. (i was a nervous wreck about a big family bar mitzvah weekend of chaos and our kids had a great time. )
I wish I knew why CHAOS is OK but little changes send him into a “No, no, no BACK!” frenzy. It’s so weird.