Parental irrelevance

Something has gradually dawned on me over the past couple of days: Lindsey doesn't need parents. Seriously. I realized that we don't really exist in her world except maybe for an annoying buzzing sound in the back of her head that she's learned to ignore.

When Lindsey wants to go outside to play, she goes outside to play. She doesn't worry that she's alone or that she can't get back into the building. (This is much safer in Switzerland than it would be in the U.S.) When Lindsey wants something to eat, she climbs up to the counter and gets it out of the cupboard. If we've put Lindsey to bed for the night and she doesn't want to go to bed, she stays up for an hour or more in her bedroom drawing pictures and writing notes to her friends. (The notes consist mostly of wavy lines across a page with a random letter thrown in now and then, which she considers to be writing.) If Lindsey wants to jump off of the balcony, she rigs up a contraption that will allow her to fly.

If we're in the store and Lindsey wants to go play on the escalator, she goes and plays on the escalator. Doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing at the time. She's not malevolent, just curious and independent, an interesting combination in a four-year-old. If Lindsey is going somewhere and I tell her not to go there, it makes no difference in her world. It's as if I hadn't spoken. Oh, sure, I can physically restrain her from going at the moment, but she will inevitably figure out a way to go. In short, Lindsey is a four-year-old adult.

She went outside to play the other day, and our plan was to send Tanner down after her. Tanner was delayed a little longer than we'd planned. A few minutes later, Lindsey reappeared at our door. We were a bit surprised since the outside door to the building is always locked. It turned out that on her way out, Lindsey had grabbed the key to the building. When she decided to come back in, she put the key in the lock and, in her words, "just twisted and twisted until it opened."

The funny thing is that she has an adult vocabulary but a four-year-old's pronunciation. Yesterday, she and Tanner were sitting on the floor playing with Legos. I heard her say, "You'll have to excuse me, please, Tanner. I have to go to da bafwoom." She doesn't climb "trees"; she climbs "twees."

It's going to be an interesting twenty years.