DS is 22 months and I am a bit despairing.
He has no brothers or sisters and we live abroad so no family. I am SAHM and DH works. Therefore linking in with local playgroup and toddler group scene is the only contact with adults/parents I get.
However, DS is not good at playing with other children. Fair enough, he is small and collaborative play with pals I understand is a later thing when they are nearer 3. However, when we go to playgroup, he escapes or goes to door trying to get out. If we go to the park, he runs off, far away, fast. He will toy with toys a bit but won't sit and concentrate on anything. Basically he just likes doing his own thing, in his own world and then checking in with me periodically.
So we go for walks and swims and up and down stairs and in lifts. At home he plays happily rushing about with his toy Hoover or banging in his toy kitchen or climbing his small indoor slide thing. He watches Peppa Pig. He loves stories and cuddling and hide and seek.
But I get fed up whenever I try to hag out with a group of other parents and see them chatting while their DC play in the park or the fountains or at soft play. Their DC stay near to their parents and stay vaguely in one place. I take my eyes off DS for a nano second and whoosh, he is gone.
I have reins but can't hold him in them whilst I chat. They are just for when we are walking about.
I am lonely and feel antisocial and think the other parents think I am stuck up because I never hang about and talk with them. I've stopped going to playgroup.
I do a coupe of music singing dancing toddler classes a week where they are all in a room. The other children walk in a circle or watch whats going on with interest. DS repeatedly escapes, runs round room, wanders about, goes to the door unless picked up and carted about by me, in which case he wriggles like a greased pilot and complains.
Help! Sorry this is so long.
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Tell me about your wandering toddlers
NapOfTheDamned · 26/10/2012 20:14
My mother laughed & said I deserved DS1. I was a terrible escape artist as an under 3yo, too. 
Sorry to laugh at you, but "wriggles like a greased pilot" 
It is very normal, there should be a toddler group where he can't get out. Play parks that are fenced in with only one gate. Make sure you and the other parents stand chatting near the gate.
It DOES get better. My bolter is 6 now and the running away phase is just a distant memory :)
Parks, with one gate, are a godsend to us! Although I have to admit that complete strangers have caught him bolting and retrieved him for me! Like wise in buildings, when he was only a crawler!
My mum has made me, a couple of times (In relatively safe places) stand back and see how far he goes, rather than rushing to retrieve him. He does go a bit further than I like (ie within my sight would be preferable!) but he always comes back very soon. If I chase round after him, he goes further because he can still see me so feels safe, if that makes sense? If he can't see me he comes back sooner.
Do you have a garden? Or a living room big enough to hold one or two adults and their offspring? We hold play dates at home if DS is being particularly difficult. Me and friends take it in turn to host each week and have lunch.
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I think somewhere around 3.5 they learn to be scared. Scared in a proper logical adult way.
Most DCs are instinctively glued to Mummy, the ones that vanish aren't.
As they get older they realise that there are things in the big bad world that can hurt them and that staying with mum is wiser, but it's a learnt skill.
In the end that's no bad thing. While DD1 learnt that it was better not to get lost, she didn't panic the once she did. She just wandered up to security.
Even at 11, DD2 gets flushed if she thinks she's lost us or we are lost driving.
We have Sat nav and road atlas and DD1 has GPS on her phone, but DD2 still panics.
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I speak as someone who lost a 3 y o bolter in a market in a foreign country for ten mins. Perhaps dont take my advice.
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