One of the life style changes I have neglected to write up is a change in the standard seating in our vehicles. This may seem small, but it is a topic of vital importance to the children, and especially the boyen.
A few weeks ago I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to move in a booster seat for Charles, so I let him just sit like a normal person. He really liked that and started a dedicated resistance program to having to use a booster seat again. We gave in, and there’s no longer a Charles booster seat in the van. This also means that he can sit in the way back of the van, which he tried out a couple of days after he won the right to an unboosted state in his previous seat.
Because life is a series of cascading events, Corwin leveraged this to insist on being able to sit in the front seat (both because it’s cooler, and because Charles was sitting with him in the way back — sitting in seats previously reserved for the younger kids was not even worthy of discussion). I had let Corwin in front a few times previously, in desperate times, but we’ve mostly given in to him as well and let him sit in front on a semi-regular basis.
It’s the modern way — no longer is a child’s maturity judged by his wood craft and hunting skills, but on what seating is is permitted in a car.