Fear and resilience

As par­ents, we are in charge of man­ag­ing so many pur­port­ed threats to our chil­dren.  Sexually explic­it books and media. Gun vio­lence.  Drag queen sto­ry hours.  Child preda­tors. Kidnapping. Drugs.  We are most­ly past the ear­ly humanoid days of wor­ry­ing about wild ani­mals (though dogs bite over two mil­lion chil­dren annu­al­ly), but now our pri­ma­ry threat to our chil­dren is each other. 

At the same time, as Mr. Rogers remind­ed us con­stant­ly, the world is full of helpers.  Our fel­low humans who hold the door or the ele­va­tor, offer a glass of water, help clean up after floods, fires, and tor­na­does, vol­un­teer in com­mu­ni­ties, and become nurs­es.  Teachers pro­tect their stu­dents with their lives; librar­i­ans risk their jobs help­ing hurt­ing kids find the books they need to feel whole and seen. 

I spent a lot of time think­ing about par­ent­ing and pro­tec­tion last week.  My younger daugh­ter is study­ing abroad this term in Jordan, and last week, for her spring break, she trav­eled to five coun­tries in Eastern Europe solo, rid­ing trains, bus­es, and taxis, stay­ing in hos­tels and AirBnBs, all of which she arranged by her­self.  I was, of course, anx­ious for her, espe­cial­ly when a Greek stu­dent I teach told me, while she was on a plane to Cyprus, that Turkey had declared a no-fly zone over Cyprus.  But it all went per­fect­ly – every train, bus, taxi, and flight got her to her intend­ed des­ti­na­tion.  She made friends and ate per­fect­ly soft-crunchy croissants. 

Anxiety and fear are con­stant com­pan­ions for me.  Sometimes while dri­ving I feel a ter­ror of what could hap­pen if a truck shift­ed lanes at the wrong moment or if anoth­er motorist failed to see me in their blind spot.  I am afraid of heights.  In some areas of my life, fear is pro­duc­tive: I have loved horse­back rid­ing part­ly because it helped train me to man­age my fear of falling; I love teach­ing because the adren­a­line of being in front of the room pro­vides an ener­gy boost to the sub­jects I care about.  But in far too many areas of my life – trav­el being a major one – I have too often let fear and anx­i­ety lim­it what I try.  I have allowed fear to make my world smaller.

But I don’t want that shrunk­en world for my kids.  When they were small, I learned a rule for let­ting tod­dlers climb: if they can climb up it by them­selves, they can get them­selves down.  Despite my own fear of heights, I learned to let them climb, and if they asked for help, I would tell them I was glad to help, but if I did that they’d have to climb low­er – so they learned to climb on their own.   Before long, they were rock climb­ing; one of them lat­er spent a sum­mer work­ing as a zipline guide at the Red River Gorge.

I also learned how to par­ent to sup­port social inter­ac­tions.  From Gavin de Becker’s book, Protecting the Gift, I learned that kids actu­al­ly are more like­ly to be approached by a child preda­tor if they stand around look­ing lost and afraid than if they approach some­one and ask.  When we were trav­el­ing, we’d play a game where the girls would point out peo­ple they could ask for help: par­ents with their own chil­dren, adults who were read­ing or work­ing, any­one in a uni­form.  Fortunately, they nev­er got lost, but I felt more cer­tain that some kind per­son would help them find me if they did. 

When my younger daugh­ter first told us about her spring break idea, I thought of what my mom would have asked (“Is that safe? How will you..?” etc.), and how my dad would have qui­et­ly fur­rowed his brow with wor­ry.  I thought of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of spot­ty wifi, and of region­al Russian aggres­sion, and earth­quakes; I thought of aggres­sive men all over the globe; I thought of the coun­tries I couldn’t have vis­it­ed at her age because they were behind the Iron Curtain. 

But I also thought of the many moments in my life when I’d been afraid to do some­thing alone, when I’d stayed home read­ing instead of explor­ing new places, when I’d hes­i­tat­ed to trav­el abroad, when I’d delayed leav­ing my first mar­riage for fear both of his reac­tion and of whether I was capa­ble enough to make it.  I thought of how much more con­fi­dent and capa­ble she is than I was at her age, and of how proud I was of her for her inde­pen­dence and courage.

I kept all my fears to myself, and I told her how much I wished I’d trav­eled like that, and that the trip sound­ed fantastic. 

Now, on my phone, I have hun­dreds of pho­tos she’s shared from her trav­els: from Jordan, Morocco, Serbia, Greece, Croatia, Romania, Cyprus, and Hungary.  Even bet­ter, I know she trusts me to encour­age her on her next adven­tures.  She knows I’m root­ing for her, and she knows that I’m hap­py to see her world grow far larg­er than mine ever was. 

Sometimes, late­ly, when I’m think­ing about doing some­thing scary, I’m bet­ter able to tune out what my par­ents would have said.  Lately, I think about my kids and the risks they’ve tak­en – mov­ing and trav­el­ing, try­ing new jobs, and play­ing new sports.  I want to be brave like them and to live in the larg­er world with them.