Letting Them Fall
When we arrived at the skating rink that April day, I was excited. "This is going to be fun!" I said, full of memories of myself gliding around the neighborhood on my skates. I was eager to teach my daughter Maya, then seven, how to skate the way I had as a kid. It turned out to be much harder than I thought – mostly for me.
We laced up our skates and headed toward the rink, our faces taking on the rainbow hue of the lights. As Maya wobbled out onto the slick surface, I, mother, giver of assistance, was ready to help. "We'll do it together," I said. "I'll help you." But when I tried to hold her hand, she wobbled even more. When I skated next to her, she skated into my feet. "Let me go mom, I got this," she said as she precariously inched forward. My stomach took a sick turn as I watched her skate out onto what looked like a speedway full of race cars. The other skaters zoomed around the rink-drivers in the Indy 500. I panicked. "Hold onto the wall," I instructed, hoping I could at least help her by telling her what to do. But she didn't want to be told what to do. She wanted to do it herself. Without me.
I took a lap around the rink and came back to skate just a bit ahead of her. I watched helplessly as she fell. She fell skating near the wall, in the middle, from one end of the rink to the other. Each time I tried to help her she shooed me away like I was a fly. And each time she fell, I heard a faint crack. Of course I was terrified that it was bones I heard breaking, but then I realized that it was the sound of my heart breaking, just a little, with each of her falls. And in that moment, I was going against the most important rule of motherhood I knew. You protect your children. You keep them safe. I was letting her fall. But after about an hour, she was cruising along and singing to the music, sweaty and bruised, but happy. I saw that she was proud. I saw how confident she was. "Look mom!" she shouted. "I'm doing it!"
In the days following our trip to the roller rink, I thought a lot about the idea of letting my child fall. After all, I often tell her, "It's ok to make mistakes because you always learn from them." But I was beginning to wonder, how often do I let her make mistakes? How often do I just do things for her because it's hard to watch her fall?
A few weeks ago, I let Maya (now eight) walk to the mailbox, less than half a block away. When it was taking longer than expected, I went to see what the hold-up was. She had jammed the key so that it was bent and wouldn't fit in the keyhole. "Wait right here," I said, "I'll go get the spare key." When I returned, Maya said, "Some lady asked me if I was ok." A streak of fear flashed through me. Did this stranger think I was putting my child at risk by letting her walk down the street on her own? With visions of Child Protective Services showing up at my door, we walked the short distance home – me second-guessing my decision to let my child engage in an independent activity – my child, well, she was quite happy.
In her blog, "Free-range Kids," Lenore Skenanzy has created a movement that encourages parents to let children take just such risks. She writes, "A Free-Range Kid is a kid who gets treated as a smart, young, capable individual, not an invalid who needs constant attention and help." However, knowing when to help and when not to, is not always so easy. Most of us remember our childhoods as having a fair amount of freedom and independence, unlike today's children, whose lives are much more contained and protected. With access to 24-hour news and all its horrifying stories about injuries and abductions, we modern parents worry more than parents did in past generations. Maybe it was this fear that made watching her fall so difficult. Maybe it was what made that well-meaning stranger worry about my child. But my child was telling me she needed me to let her go a little, to let her fall, so that she could learn how to get up on her own. I needed to listen. I needed to give her some room to grow, away from the tightened gaze of parental eyes.
As Skenanzy says, "Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling…" It's not easy. Fear is a powerful motivator. But sometimes, when we decide it's right, we have to look that fear in the eyes and tell it to get lost, so that our children can find themselves. And so, on that day at the roller rink, I chose to open the cage. And now, Maya knows the joy of gliding around the neighborhood in her own pair of spiffy new skates.
Oh, she still falls down, and not just on her skates. Only now, I don't feel like I've fallen down as a parent when she does.
Erin Beth Liles is a stay at home mom and freelance writer.
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