Our family just got back from an almost month-long sojourn to the Coast of Oregon and back through Montana. Along the way there was much wild country, and many opportunities for adventure. From the ocean, to river rapids, to rock climbing (without ropes) I was eager to get myself messy and overcome some risk. What made it extra special this trip was my six-year-old son, Eli, was right there with me in much of it. He is becoming so brave, so adventurous, and wisely confident in himself with an understanding of his limits. He has made himself those things, and with greatest pride I claim no part in forcing those characteristics upon him, though I certainly expect and desire them.
Eli has not always been eager for adventure. (He still isn’t always.) There have been many times I have issued an invitation for a challenge or a splash or a romp and one or both of his younger sisters will join in before him. This is fine. I lead all my kids into adventure, and courage, and it is not an issue of gender. But at times I have felt pressure and concern in myself for Eli’s timidity. Socially he is fearless, but in other realms I have wanted to see more confidence in him.
I can feel the desire within me to put pressure on him to jump in, to “gently” lecture him about the importance of bravery.
I have experienced the personal strengthening which comes from overcoming challenge. It is a strengthening which prepares us well for life’s less concrete challenges, the ones which require the greater bravery. I want this for him. But thankfully, for the most part, I have refrained from speeches, refrained from showing disappointment of any kind. Instead, I have continued to seek opportunity to live it myself, and continued the invitation – to him and his sisters and his mother, and now his newly walking brother.
Relentless in self-growth, relentless in invitation, hopefully absent of pressure – this has been my model. It appears to be working.
I had the privilege of walking barefoot in a mountain creek after being invited to do so by my boy, not the other way around. I later invited him into the deep and hard-flowing part of a river, where we could cling to a tree and have our bodies pulled up under us by the current. Then we climbed all over the tree. I fell in. He continued to climb even after my fall. Then later in the trip, we went down a tall waterslide together. He let me try going fast with him. He got a face and mouth full of water at the bottom. He didn’t want to go fast again, but he was right back and ready to go for our normal way sitting up.
He is growing in courage and confidence and adventurousness and he is doing it as his own pace.
If I am learning anything as a father right now it is to trust my kids to grow. My self-defined job description is to grow as tenaciously as I can, to do it in front of them, and then to trust them to do the same. No one sets out to be a coward, or a bum, or a . . . insert vice or character flaw here. Rather, guilt and shame from outside sources often trap people in such lives. I am determined not to be one of those outside sources in the lives of my children. They will be brave, and industrious, and full of wonder because they are wired to want it, and their dad is besides.
The other thing I am noticing is that kids grow in fits and starts, and sometimes growth requires going backwards. If we are continually keeping track of our kids’ progress we will make ourselves sick, and greatly increase the chances we become one of those sources of guilt and shame. By all means we should do a monthly mental-check of our kids’ well-being, we should notice them when they rock it, and when they try hard to rock it but don’t, but like any farmer knows, daily progress checks will only drive you nuts! Just let them grow. Save your daily checks for yourself.
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