"Watch your head"

Isaac's playgroup pal Nicholas started walking on Thanksgiving -- and promptly gave himself a black eye. Thankfully, Isaac hasn't come close to injuring himself that dramatically. I'm sure luck has a lot to do with it, but he also seems to be a careful and cautious child. In fact, he gives such a good impression of cautiousness that I may have grown over-confident. For example, I let him stand and bounce on the couch in the family room while I'm watching from the kitchen. He likes to hold onto the back of the couch and jump up and down -- the back cushions seem safe because they are at the height of his armpits, and even though the arms are low and unpadded wood, it never looks like he's going to vault over them. He's only fallen off the couch once -- he rolled off when he was first learning to climb onto it. When it's time to get down, he always turns around and slithers off on his belly, feet first.

He usually goes down stairs that way, too, although on Thanksgiving he did try to walk down a flight of stairs at my parents' house. Luckily I noticed he didn't seem to be slowing his pace as he headed for the stairs, and I grabbed his arm just as he took the first step and began to topple. Maybe he thought he knew how to do it -- our one-story house has a single step from our kitchen to our living room, and Isaac has recently learned to walk down it, instead of dropping to his knees and going down backwards. He holds on to the open baby gate as he cautiously lowers a foot with pointed toes, like someone testing the depth of the water in a murky pond.

Despite his recent over-confidence with the stairs, sometimes I wonder if Isaac could be too cautious. Today he climbed into a suitcase that was lying open on the floor; he sat in it with his knees drawn up like it was a little boat, merrily making engine noises. Eventually the suitcase began to lean and Isaac got too close to the brick fireplace hearth, so I said "Watch your head!" He did what he always does when he hears this warning: he stopped what he was doing, looked around for the menacing object, and then very slowly leaned toward it until his head was touching it. Then he delicately bumped his head against the hearth several times. I assume he was learning where it was so he could avoid it.

He knows what his head is, but how did he learn that this phrase means he is in danger of hitting it on something? I suppose that several times he must have hurt his head right after I said "Watch your head," and he made the connection. Pain is a powerful motivator!

One of my free-spirited uncles likes to tease me about being an overprotective parent, but I don't think it's that simple. If "overprotective" parents tend to raise cautious children, perhaps it's the result of the parents themselves being cautious people -- passing it on by nature rather than by nurture. Also, I don't discourage Isaac from trying new things or being physically daring, but I'm not going to force him, either. It's up to him to decide if he wants to use the big drum at music class, crawl through the tunnel at the playground, or be set down at a party full of strangers. Does that make me overprotective -- or just a parent who respects her child's cautious temperament? And there's nothing wrong with being cautious. I should know.