Leaving Routines

Ivan is sensitive, full of energy and enthusiasm, and he doesn’t like it when we leave him. At first, Ivan’s way of dealing with us leaving him—the nerve—was to grab our pants legs as we went out the door, attempting to pull us back in. This did not work, and it was also really hard on our wardrobe. We’ve been awarded the Order of the Iron-On Pants Patch multiple times.

We decided we needed an alternate plan, and we needed to persuade Ivan this was a good thing. We came up with a couple of ways to entertain Ivan and keep him busy while we left home without incident, aka made our escape.

Ivan loves his stuffed animals, so we decided to use them to help us exit in an orderly fashion. We say “Get your teddy” or ducky or puppy or whichever stuffed animal is at hand. Ivan grabs the stuffy and we praise him lavishly. He gallops laps around the house with his stuffed animal and we make a graceful, albeit quick, exit.

Eric leaves first on weekdays, so I’ve been trained to say “Go watch Daddy leave,” and Ivan jumps on the couch and watches as Eric drives away. Ivan then needs to complete a few laps around the house to make the departure official.
When it’s my turn to leave, I help Ivan find a stuffy and then wave to him as he sits in the window, watching me drive away.

Dasa, as one might expect from our sweet, angelic little girl, just goes upstairs to nap on the bed when we leave. She usually does this without prompting, although occasionally we might say, “Go upstairs Sweetie,” and off she goes. How did we get so lucky.