There's no place like home

I find that it's difficult sometimes to see the world from my daughter's perspective. Some things that I don't spend more than a few seconds thinking about are huge concepts to her; and sometimes they are very scary ones, too.

     There is a lot of construction going on in our neighborhood. Mostly house renovations, there are a couple of lots where the old house gets torn down and a new, mini-mansion goes up. One of these is on our route to preschool, and we happened to pass it one day at the beginning of the process. As we drove past, my 3yr old daughter noticed the giant bulldozer tearing down the old house. It was probably 40% torn down, so was still very identifiable as a house, yet very obviously with a giant hole in the side. 

     As we drove by, my first assumption of what she would see was, "wow, how cool to see big machines at work! Isn't it amazing watching them?" But I was very wrong. It turns out that what she saw was, "somebody's home is being torn down and broken! Oh no! Why is there home being torn down? Where will they live now? Is ours next? What will we do?"

     Now I admit that I'm putting words into my daughter's mouth, but it surprised me how much worry and stress seeing this caused her. She got very distressed at the idea that a house could get torn down. And it occurred to me - a house is such a permanent stable fixture, it was a profound concept to her that it isn't permanent and it could, in fact, be torn down.

     So by completely missing her perspective, I accidentally caused her stress. I didn't realize that this would be a stressful thing to watch, so I didn't try to shield her from it. I'm not normally one to shield my children from life, but I certainly could have taken a different route that morning, or at least distracted her so she didn't see the de-construction. Whoops.

    Every time we drive by, she asks about the house that got torn down and the people who lived there (we don't know them, so this is a generic question). To combat this, I make a point to talk to her about the new house that's being built and how happy it will make some family some day. Then we have another discussion about how someone is not going to tear our house down tomorrow (everything is tomorrow for her these days). 

     And every time we drive by, it also reminds me to think a little bit about what she has seen and experienced and how she might take something new. Not in the effort to shield her necessarily, but at least to be a bit more prepared and aware. The world looks very different at 3.