The Dawdle: Lessons for Dad from the Walks to Daycare

We have had the good fortune of a great, supportive daycare for the last few years. A few days ago we found ourselves quizzing Gabriel on continents he learned and can add that his math is coming along too.  The care and attention he has received was a key factor prompting us to hold him back a year. One major advantage of that daycare, however, has been the location.  Daycare is a scant 500 metres away and apart from allowing me to pick him up and drop him off, it has meant walks to and from daycare to bookend our Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays.

At the start of the day, there is the hustle to determine if he wants to walk with me or get a drive with his mother and to get him out the door.  On the night before, it may actually be a strategic move on our part to ask, "Who's walking you to school?", instead of the more neutral, drive-with-Mom-is-a-possibility use of "taking." (As I write this, I wonder if there is the slightest component of a quiz or a call for an expected response in our question rather than allowing him to flex some independent decision-making.) Getting him fed, dressed and out the door ends with him wanting to sprint down our apartment hallway to start our day.

The walks are consistent. I am always in more of a rush to get going and ensure that I'm at the office in time for the start of my day.  At the end of the day, there is less urgency on my part but the speed of his walk is dictated by his mood and energy level at the end of the day.  There are days when he wants to play king of the mountain on each pile of snow.  On others, he pays homage to the same tree (stump now, actually) that got knocked down in a hailstorm in June 2015. Some days he is exhausted and inconsolable. We race each other or run holding hands for the sake of speed without the competition. I am unrestrained in my paranoia about the traffic that is around and striving to ensure that he is vigilant about the cars.  We examine the skies on the predawn walks to acknowledge the huge moon or the colour on the horizon that promises a beautiful day makes us heed the coming of night.  We pause to take in the towers of downtown.

My mood is a factor on those walks as well.  In reality, I am writing this post to work through and trade in my own rush to get home for the presence to take in that dawdle more appreciatively.  My desire to cover those 500 metres quickly can take the opportunity out of the walk because of my poor perception of time. We do race from time to time on the walk home so I ought to take it when it comes.

If he wants to take a different route and walk through a path of large boulders to test his balance, his will wins out, as it should. When I am in a rush, I wish I could pressure him to pick up the pace or take a more direct route, but ultimately this part of the day, unbound by the walls and fence of the daycare is a moment that is his own. Apart from the simple exercise of the walk, there is a measure of independence that he can exercise by stopping the way he does and dictating a change in route if one appeals to him. Ironically, despite the independence that we might associate with the car -- it is mere mobility that a car provides -- it may actually be during this walk that he can develop autonomy with each step he does or doesn't take.  Whether I am holding his hand or a few dozen metres away beckoning him to catch up or cautioning him to watch the car there is an independence that he can exercise with each (watched) step he takes.  The talks about the day become familiar as he talks about a friend he had a hard time with.  I try to tell him to ask how his friends are rather than distancing himself and wait for the time when he can tell me he did and that it worked.

It will be years before I know if these walks amount to anything resembling an independence or autonomy that car-bound kids lack. In reality it will be a theory tested by evidence that I select quite carefully. Next September, when he starts -- as he already puts it, "real school" -- the walk will actually be a little shorter and we will start to grapple with the question of when to let him walk entirely on his own.  I started that walk one my own right away.  It was a 200 metre walk (thank you Google Maps) and I only had one residential street to cross.  Gabriel's will be a little longer and cross a major thoroughfare where moving violations occur with regular, cacophonous frequency.  As I did in the 1970's, I am confident that Gabriel will, when we allow him, be able to navigate that route with the good sense that I did.  For now, though, we will dawdle.