Poor Tyler, about two weeks ago he had an incident that apparently traumatized him fairly badly. I picking him up at Kathy’s, and was standing upstairs chatting with her for a few minutes. He got restless and said he was going to go downstairs and play. After a few minutes, we heard her door open, and Kathy said “did he just go outside?”. Before I could answer, Ty came howling across the downstairs, and up the stairs crying and yelling. When I finally managed to calm him down, I found out that apparently he had gone outside several minutes before, and neither of us had heard the door.
He had gone outside and gotten in the car to play in there. Somehow he managed to lock himself in, got scared and started crying. He told me “I was playing in your car and I got stuck in there, I couldn’t get out. I started crying for you but you didn’t come!” (this part almost broke my heart. I told him I didn’t hear him, and that if I had I would have come right away. still, somehow I feel guilty about the whole thing….).
After he calmed down, I did point out to him that he knows he is not supposed to go outside without a grownup. I had hoped that would be the end of it, but I have noticed since then that he is extremely nervous and gets very scared when I am out of his line of sight for more than a few seconds. It has gotten to the point where, after strapping him into his car seat, I have to go around the front of the car to get to the driver’s side, otherwise in the time it takes me to go around behind the car, he starts to cry. Poor little guy.