Conquering fear

I successfully fought the urge to say "Be careful" long enough to take this photo.

Just got back from vacation. I'll share stories about that later, but I thought I'd talk about this photo, which was taken Saturday night, after we got back from our trip. One of the things I've notice about children--or at least Soen--is that they won't do anything until they're damn ready to. I don't know how many times I've tried to get Soen to try something new and had him flatly refuse it, only to try it later on his own terms and find the new experience thrilling. And saying, "See? I told you it would be cool. I've been trying to tell you how cool this is for months now. For the love of god will you ever listen to me?" doesn't really help the cause.

But when he's ready, he's ready and he'll launch himself at it all the way. The past few weeks have been especially adventurous for him. He started swimming without his life preserver (or "boat coat") and then he put his head underwater for the first time. Then he started swimming underwater--first holding his nose, then not--and then jumping into the deep end and swimming to me (at my prompting, not on his own, so relax yourselves). During vacation he actually let me carry him into the ocean, past the crashing waves, out to where he could float (with his boat coat) and rolling in the waves. This was something I'd tried to get him to do literally for months now. All of this and more in just two weeks.

The flip side of this is me having to conquer my own fears of having a suddenly fearless son, who likes to try new things. I find myself saying "be careful" so often I sound like Rain Man. Check out Exhibit A, this photo, taken as my son decided that he could climb to the very top of our community jungle gym. It's hard to tell from the photo, but he's standing on this ledge at the top of a round pole about eight feet off the ground. The ledge was clearly designed by someone who wanted kids to have just enough room to stand on but not enough room for their parents to like it. I was watching Soen climb this thing while I was on the phone with my dad, which was good because it gave me a break from saying "be careful." But soon, Soen was going higher than I was comfortable with, so I told my father as calmly as I could that I had to go "pay attention to Soen." What I wanted to say was, "My son is about to plummet to his death. Do you know of any good excuses I can use to explain this to my wife?"

Anyway, I was rather proud of myself for not only resisting the urge to say "be careful" but for encouraging him to pose for this photo. (He's showing off his muscles.) Luckily, his desire to see the photo I took got him down faster than if I had asked him to. So now I know what to do next time he's off doing something scary: Whip out the camera.