HOOK

52 HOOK l P arenting r t f A There is a moment in paren3ng when we realize that we cannot do it for them. We can guide, encourage, teach, or offer our experience and perspec3ve. Some3mes give a gentle warning when we see some- thing they may not see yet. But at some point, we have to let them try. And some- 3mes, we have to let them get it wrong. This sounds simple. It is not always easy. As parents, we want so badly to protect our children from the things that hurt. We want to save them from embarrassment, disappointment, bad decisions, mistakes, and the consequences that might come from not knowing what we know. But our children are learning how to live. They are not learning how to live our lives. I have been thinking about this a lot lately not only as a mother, but as someone who has spent most of my life working with chil- dren. There is something so beau3ful about watching a child learn something for the first 3me. They don't know the right way yet. They try something, it doesn't work, and they try something else. They are not embarrassed by being begin- ners. We are o$en the ones who are un- comfortable watching them be beginners. We see the struggle and want to help. We see the mistake coming and want to stop it. We hear them saying something we know isn't quite right and want to correct them. We watch them making a choice that we wouldn't make and immediately think, I need to say something. Some3mes we do. And some3mes we don't. I recently found myself in one of those mo- ments with my son. He decided to try out for the high school freshman tennis team. He was only in seventh grade and, while he had played some tennis, he hadn't played a ton. My first thought was, Is this really a good idea? I worried that he might be set- 3ng himself up for a huge disappointment. I imagined him not making the team, feeling embarrassed, and deciding that maybe ten- nis just wasn't for him. I could already see the failure before he had even tried. And I had to keep all of that to myself. When I drove him to prac3ce, I remember feeling almost like I was holding my breath. I think I was more nervous than he was. I watched from the car as he got out and walked toward the courts. Then I saw, there he was, walking right up to a group of high school kids. I knew he was nervous. But he was doing it. And in that moment, I realized that whether he made the team or not wasn't really the point. The important thing was that he had an idea, he wanted to try something, and he was willing to put him- self in a situa3on where he might not suc- ceed. He did make the team, but honestly, that isn't what stayed with me. What stayed with me was watching him walk onto that court. I had thought I knew what might be best for him. I had already imag- ined the disappointment. But he didn't need me to protect him from the possibility of failing. He needed the space to find out for himself. Maybe he would have made the team. Maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe he would have loved it. Maybe he would have decided tennis wasn't for him. All of those possibili3es were part of the process. And isn't that what we want for our chil- dren? Not that they always make the team or get it right, but that they become willing to try? That space between wan3ng to step in and choosing to step back is where par- en3ng gets really interes3ng. What if our children need more opportuni3es to dis- cover things for themselves? What if they need to experience the small consequences of their choices while the stakes are s3ll rel- a3vely low? What if they need to know what it feels like to make a mistake and re- alize, Oh. That didn't work. Let me try something different. There is a kind of con- fidence that can come only from experi- ence. We cannot hand it to our children. We can tell them they are capable. We can tell them we believe in them. But eventu- ally, they need to experience their own ca- pability. They need to feel it. I think about a young child learning to ride a bike. We can run alongside them, holding the back of the seat. We can remind them to look ahead and tell them to keep pedal- ing. But there comes a moment when we Learning to Trust Our Children to Find Their Way Text & Photography by Dana Daly

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