I have 2 children age 5 and 2. The youngest is a typical toddler, but seems to have hit a tricky stage of finding giving me a fright HILARIOUS. He’s a runner and I can’t take my eyes off him for literally more than a second or he’s off - he sprints away and doesn’t look back. He climbs everything he can get his hands on, has zero danger awareness and basically needs heavy monitoring. All quite normal I guess.
But then there’s my 5 year old (she’s nearly 6 if that’s relevant). She just doesn’t ever seem to have developed any kind of common sense when it comes to personal safety. We’re on holiday at the moment and today alone I’ve stopped her being hit by cyclists about 1000 times (in a sports holiday location with loads of cycle paths), stopped her falling into an ornamental pond full of fish, stopped her barging into about 50 people because she just doesn’t ever seem to look where she’s going, plus intervened in 5 or 6 other ‘near misses’ when she’s gone flying because she’s done something silly and careless. She spills drinks, drops everything, climbs her chair at every meal - she can’t just ever sit down. She can’t walk nicely along a pavement without wandering into the road or stumbling off the kerb.
It’s absolutely exhausting being so hyper alert 24/7 and I’m becoming increasingly shouty, angry and resentful that I can’t take my eyes off them for literally more than a couple of seconds. I swear I have cortisol or whatever it is constantly pumping through me from constant near misses and having to leap up every 2 seconds to intervene in whatever crazy thing they’ve done next. I’m permanently on edge, and not at all a nice relaxed mum.
Anyone else going through this?