Will they take him for this? - Page 2

[AllisonR]

Maybe you could try the opposite. He is running off because it gets your attention, which maybe he wants right now. Adding a new baby moved your world, but it moved his as well. Let him run, After a few times of this, where you let him go and give no response, he will drop it. By no response, I mean neither get upset or worried or angry or anything, not good, not bad, just neutral - "oh, you ran off, ok, now I am going back to bf the baby" or whatever).

I have a 6 yo DS who is very cautious, who would NEVER disobey the rules, because they are rules. And I have a wild 4 yo DD, would would bite me just to prove different. She did the whole running off thing a few times when she was 3. I let her. It was in our neighborhood. Let her get herself home. If it had been the center of NYC (where I used to live), I would of taken her home, had consequences, but still been totally neutral about it. But that is neither here nor there. Point is, she got to run off, but she got no reaction from me. Which is what she was wanting. So she did it about 3 more times, then realized it wasn't getting her anywhere, so she stopped. 

Allison - who apparently on this thread some people might think I am raising chickens and not children! Loving it anyway!!!

[littlest birds]

Please very careful with assuming this is for attention, or using ignoring as a strategy where safety is involved.  My ds did this same behavior and would also leave us in extremely crowded unfamiliar places.  It was never for attention.  If he was interested in something, that was where he went.  If I had assumed he would get himself home, bad things would have been likely to happen. 

(Now, he has an Asperger's dx, and has serious attention issues and boundary issues even now.  However, back then he had no diagnosis and we just dealt with him from the perspective that he was just unusually hard to deal with and we just addressed one behavior at a time.) 

We put key locks on the inside of our doors so that they required a key both inside and outside, but that was probably not the best solution because it was hard to install them and he grew out of that behavior soon and we didn't need them for very long.

[D_McG]

Originally Posted by waiting2bemommy 

When I was finally able to "turn him loose" outside and be reasonably sure he would follow the rules it was a relief to both of us. He also stopped "escaping" when my back was turned because he knew all he had to do was ask

you really let your 3 year old play outside, alone? My goodness. I find that shocking. Unless you're talking about a fenced yard?

[swd12422]

When I was growing up, we had a deadbolt near the top of the door. You needed a key to unlock it, even from the inside. The key was NOT accessible (keep it on your wrist or in a pocket at all times, in case you need to get out of the house). We never were escape artists, but it would definitely work to detain one!

PS - I know you said you "can't afford" to change the lock, but I think it's relatively inexpensive to add another one. And you can't "afford" to have something bad happen more than you can't afford a new lock, which isn't much money.