Time for duct-tape

I love my child.  Really I do.  (You can tell you're the mother of a toddler when you have to start out every other paragraph with that disclaimer.)  He and I are having serious issues, though.

You know, I'm proud of him that he's dexterous, could put together puzzles right after his first birthday, can operate locks and electronic equipment.  I think it's great that he can turn on any electronic machine he finds, even ones that aren't obvious, and operate some of them.  (Ok, I hate that he DOES it, but I think it's interesting that he has the ability.)  He can work the clasps to buckle himself in his high chair and grocery carts.  I was told by some church workers that they thought Jake would be an engineer when he grew up, because he was the only kid out on the playground who could figure out how to open the gate -- and he kept opening it again and again.  His newest trick? unbuckling his seatbelt.

We moved Jake up to a booster seat because he's too tall to fit into his carseat.  He no longer has a 5 point harness keeping him in, it's just the regular car seatbelt, threaded through the booster seat so it hits him at the right points.  I thought this would be ok, but on Sunday (after riding in this seat for a month without incident), he figured out how to unbuckle the seatbelt.  He then proceeded to get completely out of the seatbelt, and got down from his seat.  I was driving on the interstate.  Have you ever driven on Nashville's interstates?  Not a place you can pull over safely, and definitely not a place to be distracted by a child not in a carseat.  I grabbed his arm and pinned him down to a sitting position on the floorboard behind the passenger seat (all the while driving 75 miles an hour).  I was 3 miles away from an exit, so I got off and pulled into a gas station.  I was very mad.

I do believe in spanking children for certain things and under certain conditions, but I didn't think this applied.  This time.  So much time had passed between him doing it and when I finally pulled over, he wouldn't have understood why he was getting spanked.  And it was the first time he did it -- I can understand that he has a fascination with how things work, and he just wanted to see if he could do it.  But I gave him a MAJOR, in-your-face talking to.  His feelings were very hurt, but it was necessary -- there are some things I just don't budge on, and car safety is one of them.  In my car it is NEVER ok to ride without a seat belt -- I even make my mom wear one, and she hates seat belts.

So I thought maybe we would be ok, but then Tuesday on our way home from Priscilla's house, he took the seat belt off again.  I was just about to pull off on the main road, so I parked the car, put my blinkers on, and crawled over to the seat to hook the seatbelt back up.  I was trying to explain to him that he isn't allowed to touch the seatbelt, that he can NOT take it off, that when we're in the car he needs to sit still in his seat, blah blah blah, of course he wasn't listening.  Developmentally he honestly doesn't understand when I tell him things like this.  He has the ability to unbuckle the seatbelt but lacks the comprehension to understand that he shouldn't.  The only way I can explain it is that it just hasn't "clicked" in his head yet to understand a lot of things.  I think it's tied to his slower verbal abilities (or maybe the reason for it), and it's fine -- it will click one day and he'll be fine.  He just hasn't reached that point yet, so in some ways it's like dealing with a baby.  With the body and fine motor skills of a 4 year old.

Anyway, after talking to several people about this I've decided that I'm going to find an additional way to belt him in, like a pants belt looped behind the carseat and buckled around him, but the buckle turned where he can't reach it.  Surely he won't figure out to pull the buckle around.  That way even if he does get the seatbelt unbuckled, he's still strapped in enough that he can't get down until I can pull over.  It won't be overly tight, just enough that he can't get down, and I don't think if we had an accident it would be any harder to get him out of that than it would be if he still had a 5 point harness (our old carseat was hard to operate unless you knew just how to squeeze the plastic clip.)  I've also started telling him every single time I buckle him in that he can't touch the seatbelt and that he needs to sit still until we get home.  I think only time will tell how effective either of these solutions will be.  (Help?!!!)

Comments

[Shelly]

I can't help you on this one. I also have an escape artist who helps his brothers escape. Thankfully Sean screams to me Daniel is getting out-again! We use the police threat on him, so far it works most of the time. Here in CA, parents can be arrested for children being out of their seats for neglience and endangerment! Peter can wiggle out if he tries hard and long enough. I have made it harder, but he still can.
Good luck!

[Sue]

We're going through the same thing right now. We put a booster seat in the car just this week as Ryan is too big for his baby seat with 5 pt harness. He figured out in about 3 seconds how to undo the seat belt, then once it was done up again, he slid himself down the seat just to make life even more difficult :) I'm telling him he can undo the seatbelt only when the car is not running and so far (we've only had 3 trips in the new seat)he's been excited enough anticipating the next stop. I do miss that 5 pt harness! I'll definitely be reading the responses you get :)