My Six Year Old Daughter Is Running Away From Home

I suppose this is a stage that most kids go through, but I must admit it caught me by surprise.

This evening my daughter had been eating from a large container of Party Mix. She accidentally left it standing for a while without the lid--later she noticed that a fly had got inside. Unthinkingly, I threw the whole thing into the garbage.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back--my daughter had wanted that Party Mix, fly or no fly. And she was not going to take this sort of mistreatment lightly.

She got some paper and crayons and started drawing a map:
She informed me that she was leaving--going to Disney World.
The dot in the lower left hand corner is home. If you follow the trail, you end up at a dot on the left middle side of the page. That seemed kind of long, so I pointed out that it would be much shorter just to go straight from the first dot to the last. Why take the long route? Her response: too many dead ends.

Then she made a second map and taped it onto the first.
This one she did not explain to me, but at this point she became more adamant that she was leaving and started making preparations.

Besides packing her own bags--filled with essential dolls, toys, and a blanket--she also drew a picture to remember her parents by:Other than the fact that she did not draw me with a face, and labeled the picture Mom and Bad--I think that overall, she took things pretty well. This was taped onto the other 2 pages, along with a page that she had the Aleph Beis on.

At this point, she gave us the details of her itinerary:

She was leaving home tonight and would be travelling on foot, sleeping at night along the way at the rest stops (which she became familiar with on our car trip to Cinicinnati). But where would she sleep since she was not taking the car? The bathroom. My wife informed her that they don't allow that.

That didn't stop her: her dog Pinky (a doll) was going to scout ahead and build treehouses at the rest stops for her to sleep at.

At this point, we came out with our Ace in the hole--if she left home, she wouldn't be able to go on the camp trip to Sesame Place!

She asked for a calendar and revised her plans: she would leave Sunday and come back in time for Shabbos, so she could go to Shabbos groups.

She started to lose some steam: to me she said "You guys are going to miss me...right?"
To her mother she whispered: "Mommy, I don't really have to travel...do I? It's just our secret."

She's asleep now--and even though she has her packed bags next to her bed, we don't expect her to be leaving for a while, although before she went to bed she did ask to drink some milk because it has vitamins and protein which she said she'll need for her trip.

Of course, being a milestone in our daughter's life, we also called Bubby so our daughter could share the news. When I got on the phone, my mother informed me of something that I had forgotten.

Apparently when I was around my daughter's age, I also threatened to leave home. According to my mother, I looked at her expectantly--waiting for her to beg me to stay. Instead she packed me a bag, with clothes and food.

I think that explains a lot.