Sometimes we feel we have to break promises and lose trust in order to let our children thrive independently. I refuse to do this.
A couple of years ago, I made a promise to my now four-year-old daughter that I intend to keep for the rest of our lives. It’s a promise that means so much to both of us that when I begin to repeat it, she finishes it for me and follows up with a hug that warms my soul. The promise is simple and from the heart: “I will never let you fall.” And I never will.
In the meantime, however, I have stood back and watched as she has: coughed her way through bi-lateral pneumonia, run face-first into a tree, been ejected from her bicycle at high speed, severed a finger (thank you Kutz and Kleinert), touched a hot Weber grill, slammed the back of her head on the tub faucet, taken a punch or two from her cousin (not entirely undeserved), had her tear ducts surgically cleared, pushed various grandparents to the breaking point, lost several sandwiches to several quick, but friendly, dogs, and stubbed and cut toes she didn’t even know she had. The atrocities she has inadvertently subjugated her hair to are one magic marker short of warranting a U.N. Peace-Keeping Force. Rest assured, as parents, my wife and I have met the limits of our patience as well as our deductible. Seven emergency room visits in four years have left us with what we think is a fairly realistic perspective on the horrors of healthy childhood bangs, bumps and bruises. Knock on wood, my one-year-old son has so far limited his “adventures” to eating cat food. He’s yet to scratch our sofa.
Although all of the above happened within ten feet of me, I doubt I could have prevented any of these “spills.” Nor, looking back, do I regret not being able to. Circumstance, fate and false confidence have an impulsive way of turning our delicate offspring into temporary punching bags right in front of our faces. In most of the scenarios, she was in my arms before the tears even began to flow. The feeling of a weeping child surrendering all tension to the safety of her mom or dad’s touch will be forever imprinted on a parent’s psyche. I have never felt more valued than when one of my children “melts” into my chest and buries a runny nose and teary eyes into my shoulder. Nothing else exists nor matters in that brief period of time. On an existential level, these times give our lives purpose and meaning. On a biological level, they provide an extra shot of adrenaline and serotonin. These are the times that I remind her of my promise. She nods and understands, wipes her tears and runs off to play, fueled in part by the trust that I truly never will let her fall.
As she gets older, it worries me that I will not always be there when she stumbles, stubs, paints, lacerates, bruises, burns, embarrasses and spindles herself. When I am on the scene, it’s easy to accept these incidents for what I truly believe they are: opportunities to build confidence and character. A little adversity is a healthy thing. We all agree on that. I just want to be there to offer a chest for melting and a shoulder for crying. While I know that I can’t always do that, I also resist accepting the reality of it all. I would much rather experience fatherhood through the loving touch of interdependence rather than the unsettling feeling that my distance has allowed my daughter, and her trust, to fall.
In working through this, it becomes necessary to recognize the same trust in my promise that my daughter does. She has cried out in pain for her daddy before when I haven’t been there, and it breaks my heart to hear about it after the fact. It is these times that we have to remind ourselves of our responsibility to enforce the fact that emotional support is not regulated by proximity. The literal brains of our children make them the ultimate realists, but they have the capacity to understand, sometimes better than we do, the reality that we can’t always be there. Like a lot of lessons learned in our lives, initial self-reliance is acquired through a sad and teary trial by fire. Their readiness to advance to this next level hinges directly on our willingness to permit the journey to take place. It seems like no sooner do we bring these tiny people into the world that we begin letting them go. As an educator, I don’t mind telling everyone within shouting distance that letting go is the healthy and necessary thing to do. I believe this about you and your child, but I’m struggling to believe this about my daughter and me.
I suppose if I was truly struggling on anything but an emotional level, I would have never allowed her to reach terminal velocity on her bike, play on the deck during barbeques, or proclaim our oak tree “the finish line.” It’s true that I will never let her fall, and she can trust me on this. Somewhere in deep recesses of these “life lessons” I hope she can understand that always catching someone is just another way of letting them fall. She may not get this at age four, but I trust her enough to know she’ll figure it all out. Lately, she’s much more apt to stand up after a tumble, brush herself off and run on without even acknowledging my presence. It hurts sometimes to see this. I know that it’s partly my promise and trust that propels her on. I just never imagined a snot-free shirt could hurt so much. Only in parenthood is the proof of your success measured by self-perceived obsolescence.
In the meantime, jumping on the bed, reading together and collecting “slimy-slimy” slugs will slowly take the place of the sobbing hugs and my adrenaline and serotonin rushes. I know that watching me work to roll with these changes has made a big difference in how she handles growing up. Luckily, I’ve got another one who still requires my constant assurance in order to get through the day. He can rest assured that he has the same promise his sister does. I will lovingly remind him of this when I rock him to sleep the night we have him de-clawed.