Sometimes, little ones learn more by watching than they do by hearing. Here is an example.
I close doors. The video is only 22 seconds, but it proves Brynne closes doors too.
Mostly, I do this to block off access to potentially dangerous parts of the house. Our house is not a death trap for little ones, but a bathroom obviously poses more of a threat than the living room - as does a kitchen or any room with stairs.
The girls have picked up on this. More often than not they will close doors behind them.
Brynne is almost beside herself when we leave the bathroom after a bath. She will close the door to the bathroom, then the door to our closet, and finish with the door to our bedroom.
Most of the time she is closing the door to a room she has just left, but not always. When getting ready for the bath she will close the door, shutting us all inside. I assume it's to keep the heat in, but who knows for sure.
Doors in the house are not all that get closed.
Refrigerator doors, car doors, hatches on the back of the car, baby/puppy gates, doors to the dog's houses, cabinets, entertainment centers, drawers - I think you get the picture. If something can be shut, she will shut it. Hadley will do the same, but she doesn't appear to be as OCD as Brynne is.
That's a good thing. At least she won't ever be accused of being raised in a barn or trying to heat/air condition the whole neighborhood.
Along with the good comes the bad.
I will confess that I almost always lock doors behind me. When my in-laws sold their house they had to change the locks. I don't know any reason why you wouldn't change the locks when you move into a new house anyway, but they had to do it as they were moving out.
Why? Because they couldn't find any of the keys.
That blew me away.
I don't purposefully leave the house and leave it unlocked, or my car for that matter.
Brynne has taken up on that. The only problem is she knows how to use the locks on our internal doors and might have locked herself in a room before.
Once the girls could reach the handles I made sure Mama knew how to unlock them from the outside. She already knew it, but I just wanted to be sure.
It came in handy the first time Brynne was knocking/banging on a door from the other side and Julia tried to twist a handle that wouldn't turn.
For now, the external door locks still are too hard to turn for them, but I'm sure the time is coming when they'll figure it out.
Guess I should have left those child proof things on the doors after I moved in instead of pitching them.
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4 comments:
After closing doors comes opening them... it's far worse than you can imagine.
And you'd better start making sure you have a key into the house outside the house from now on. Both D and I have been locked out of the house before :-p
she's so adorable and she obviously takes this door business very seriously.
I love the look of satisfaction on her face at the end of the video!
My two want to turn off lights. My dad would be so proud.
How cute is she, toddling around shutting all those doors!!!!!
My kids used to be like that too but then the glamour of shutting doors wasn't so intriguing anymore so now they leave everything open, including the fridge, the sliding door to our backyard. It drives me nuts!!
Every time I begin my rant, "Did I miss the memo about electricity...", they interrupt me with, "No, there was no memo that electricity is free today."
Yet still...they leave the freakin' doors open. My only revenge is knowing they'll have their own kids someday who will more than likely do the same thing...and only then will they understand exactly how maddening it is.
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