Family Life

This afternoon I took Joel with me on an errand, just the two of us. On the way back he asked, with a mischievous grin, if he could sit in Daniel’s seat. Sure. Why not? So with much conspiratorial laughter I buckled Joel into Daniel’s car seat, wondering what his comments would be about the new perspective.

We’ve started all our children in a rear-facing car seat, set in the middle of the vehicle. When Daniel graduated to a forward-facing seat we placed him on the curb side, behind the front passenger. The idea was to make it easier and safer to put the boys in and out of the car while out and about, particularly when parked on a street. By this stage we had Joel, and he now occupied the rear-facing seat in the center.

Then Joel graduated to a forward-facing seat, and Micah came along. So Joel went to the other side of the car, behind the driver, with Micah in the middle. The point to all of this is that the boys have always had a fixed position in the car when out driving. No variety whatsoever, and the rear-facing seat doesn’t count because they were too young to remember it. In fact, whenever the boys go in someone else’s vehicle we put their car seats in the same relative positions. It makes it easier if the boys know where to get in without having to be told.

So I wondered what Joel would have to say about the new view.

His first comment, as we were leaving the parking lot, was, “Daddy, you turned the steering wheel upside down!” And it dawned on me that in almost three years of life Joel had never seen someone drive. Ever. He’s always been behind the driver, but never tall enough to see over the head & headrest in front of him.

So for the rest of the drive home we discussed the finer points of steering wheel management–when to turn it a little, when to turn it a lot, when to hold it still. It was very educational. And so are sown the seeds of “Daddy, can I drive?” that will crop up for the next fifteen years.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 9:08 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.