I panicked, horror stories of children locked in cars probably were in the back of my mind. I called Talmage and told him what was going on. I tried to coax Hannah into unlocking the door. She would put her finger on the button but not push it. I told her to open the door and she pulled on the handle, but not hard enough. When I would point to something she would just point to my finger on the window. All the while she wasn't too terrible interested.
After 15 minutes or so of trying to work with her I said a prayer. A lecture Talmage had in school on dealing with stress came to my mind. Basically if someone is under stressed or over stress their productivity weakens. I just knew that I had to wait for the right time where she was a little worried but not overwhelmed. I went back inside and started deep cleaning, something I needed to do for that night anyways.
I went and checked on them a couple times, trying to see if she would cooperate. She was more interested in
- a permanent marker (how does she always find those!)
- gum, she ate one and a half packets of gum
- crackers, which she also feed to Heber
- dumping my purse and wallet and stringing the contents all over the van
Heber was a good sport about all of it. I could tell he didn't want to be in his car seat and he whined when he saw me, but he handled it well.
Finally, after an hour and a half I got her to push the unlock button! I opened the door so fast and caught her as she was falling out of the van. I hugged her and told her that she did a good job.
Moral of the story, patience goes a long ways with kids. Or just have a spare key around, it will come in handy.