On Teaching My Fearless Toddler...

This little girl is crazy about animals, and she gets a little loca every time she sees one. She is particularly fascinated with my friend Robyn's cat, Lizzy. The other day she started squealing "Gato!! Gato!! Gato!!" over and over upon seeing poor Lizzy, and then proceeded to chase her everywhere while trying to prod and poke her.

Needless to say, Lizzy doesn't exactly reciprocate these loving feelings towards Maddie, and even though she will try to nip at her fingers and even scratch her leg (see above picture), it hasn't seemed to minimize Maddie's excitement and affection for her.

I was reading an article titled Teaching your Fearless Toddler to be more Cautious and the advice it gave was basically "They'll never believe that the stove is hot until they get burned." In other words, they have to suffer the natural consequences (within reason--don't let them hurt themselves too much) in order to understand how to be more cautious. I guess she'll eventually learn that if she tries to poke the cat's eyes out, the feline is going to get angry and fight back.

Judging from the fact that Maddie has fallen down the Parkinson's wooden stairs 3 times in the last month because she insists on walking down them instead of sliding on her little bottom, this probably isn't the last cat scratch she'll ever receive.

(Disclaimer: I promise I am not a neglectful mother--my daughter just moves much faster than I do these days and she's hard to keep up with. And I was hoping for a cuddly cat picture above, but Lizzy didn't feel the same way and let it be known right as the picture was being snapped.)