Knock, Knock

Second only to Adam's fascination with shoes! shoes!, is his love of doors. More specifically, shutting a door, knocking on it, then opening it, then doing it all again...and again. It's a little bit of a literal stretch for him, all this opening and closing, because he can barely reach the door knob. I have a few months left before the slamming begins. And, last night, he spent the better part of half an hour putting his shoes! shoes! in and out of the hall closet in conjunction with his door dance, which enabled Doug and I to eat dinner without be climbed on.

Lots of things little kids do and say kind of come out of the blue. At least with Adam. For example, he calls the ceiling fans "bubbles", plain as day, and I have no idea why.

But we know why he has the thing with doors.

It all started at church. All the kids go to their own Sunday School while we go to ours. It's an hour Doug and I get to spend together each week without being climbed on, hung on, or beckoned over and over and over again. When Adam was younger we could take him to his Sunday School room/nursery and all was fine. He didn't cry when we left because we did it every day during the week. He just thought it was another day at daycare.

But, as he got a little older and moved to the Toddler Sunday School, he'd cry when we'd drop him off. Doug volunteered to take him to his room each Sunday, just to ease my pain a little. I was grateful for that.

Finally, one Sunday, we decided to turn it around and make going to Sunday School Adam's thing. We decided to make it something he could "do himself" and be "in charge of." Instead of coaxing or negotiating to get him down the hall and in the door, we thought we'd let him "be a big boy". We encouraged him to walk down the hall to his classroom instead of carrying him. And then we taught him to knock on the door. (**As a side note, we go to a very large church and, for safety reasons, cannot just walk into the small children's Sunday School rooms. We must knock first, then slip the sign-up form under the door).

So, knock he did. When the door opened, in he walked. And that was that. Not even a good-bye. Which is how we wanted it.

It's been several months since that first knock. Now it's old hat. There are no tears when we leave him, from Adam or from me. We've grown to love his Sunday School teacher, Miss Lynne, and she, him.

I hope Adam is always encouraged to take the reins, try things on his own, and knock on doors. Doors in his life will open and sometimes he's not going to take advantage of the passage. Doors in his life will close when he least expects it. Those things we cannot control.

But I hope this little exercise in owning a journey, even if it is to the door of a Sunday School room, can help him always be confident enough to knock.