Toddler Steps

Reflecting Back; Oct 23rd, 2014

​On our urban wild adventures I often brought a 'tool' to help engage you in exploring  your new surroundings. Sometimes it was a small stuffed animal like a fox, collection container, magnify glass or tongs to pick things up with. These 'tools' often played a small role in your explorations...and more often than not you would just ask for a snack as soon as you saw me reach into my bag in search of our new "tool". Hmmmm. So we snacked...

For this particular adventure I envisioned us hiking along a trail, happily exploring the tall grasses and rose hips beside us. This did happen, but mostly from the comfort of your snack spot.  This day you stayed particularly close to me in fact I carried you most of the way...this is not what I had in mind. This is the first day that I really did sense your discomfort with where I had taken you. We were on a narrow path in a huge open grassland on a side of a hill. I realized that my expectations were still guiding me and had the potential to mislead my efforts to build a relationship between you and the natural world. I felt guilty for pushing you and disappointment that I needed to slow down, back off and reassess.