Our daughters used to have an obsession with locking themselves in their room. Unfortunately, they were old enough to lock themselves in their room but not old enough to figure out how to unlock the latch and get out. So, after several dramatic, tear-filled weeks in a row of picking the lock or taking the entire knob off the door, my husband decided to reverse the knob on our daughters’ door so that it locked from the outside only. Sounds like a genius, fail-proof plan right? Yep. Until my precious, innocent, little Irish twins closed the door behind me once and locked me in.

No big deal, right? I said to myself. I can handle this. No one’s life is in danger. It’s a simple problem to fix. No big deal. I’ll just talk them through it and they’ll be able to unlock the door. Who was I fooling? After lots of crying (mostly by me) the door was still locked and now everyone was hungry (mostly me). Did I mention that I was about 6 months pregnant? That explains the crying and the hunger, right?

So, I looked at my options and decided that if I stood on the toy box I could get enough height to hop out of the first-story bedroom window. I pried off the screen and opened the window without much problem. I was feeling confident my plan would work until I heard my pants split as I was coming over the window. Darn those Dairy Queen cravings from Week 14, I thought.

But the split in my pants was the least of my problems. I was still a good five feet off the ground and I’m pretty sure this little adventure was not on my doctor’s list of approved activities for my prescribed modified bedrest. I thought to myself, Just stay calm. Think of the positives. What on earth could be a positive right now? Hmmm … Think hard, I’m sure there’s a positive somewhere in this situation. At least there are no witnesses to this event. That’s a positive.

With that thought in my mind, I courageously took a death-defying leap and crossed my fingers that I could stick my landing in flip flops despite my protruding baby belly. To my surprise, I not only kept my balance, but I was also greeted by a chorus of cheers from my neighbors who had somehow caught a birds-eye view of the whole show. Where did they come from? I asked myself. And why didn’t they come help me? I’m pretty stubborn so I probably wouldn’t have accepted the help even if they had offered it.

I’d love to say that this was the only time that I’ve been locked in a room at the hands of my children. Once I was locked in my friend’s daughter’s bedroom on the second story. (There was no leaping  from tall buildings for me.) We were at the mercy of our two mischievous toddlers – 12 months and two years at the time. We had no phone, no food, and no hope for help for hours. Lucky for us, we had been assembling an IKEA bookshelf when the door locked behind us so we did have a large pile of tools to help us make our escape in time to pick up our older children from school and to keep the preschool aged rascals from getting into more mischief. They were pretty pleased with themselves when they figured out that they’d locked us in.

Years later, and with no children under the age of 4 living under my roof, I think maybe I’d like my kids to lock me in my room—especially if it was quiet, filled with fluffy pillows and large quantities of chocolate.