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The other day I was driving down a very straight, yet very rural, road. On one side of the long straight road was a large cornfield. On the other side, there were some pretty little country houses. The posted speed limit was 30 mph.
As I was admiring the picture-perfect, Norman Rockwell-like view, thinking how lucky I was to call this place home, I noticed, just up ahead, a young girl riding a bike. The bike, which still had its training wheels attached, was pink and white and had pretty streamers coming off each handle bar. The young bike rider was wearing a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads and had Mom, jogging slowly behind her. Mom must have looked back at me five or six times before I finally passed, which I did whilst travelling at a speed of about 15 mph and pretty much hugging the opposite side of the road.
I smirked as I drove by, thinking that, yes, this is the perfect type of road for teaching your child how to ride a bike and, also, at how very protective Mom was of her child. It made me think back at how protective I was when my girls were that little.
As parents, we instinctively want to protect our children from getting hurt. We put them in car seats, put away poisons, cover electrical outlets and gate off stairways.
In addition to the physical layers of protection we offer them, we also try to protect them from getting emotionally hurt by monitoring their social media, video games and play dates. If we could wrap our children in bubble wrap, we would, yet, when the time is right, we do let them fall down, because, in the end, that is the only way they learn.
Animals in the wild, savagely protect their young. They feed their babies while they in turn, starve. They nurture and hide them while they in turn, act as diversions for predators. Mother animals protect their young until … it is time not to; otherwise, their babies would never learn how to survive on their own, and they certainly wouldn’t know, then, what to teach their own children.
Although the circumstances differ slightly, the same protection principals apply for us humans. I didn’t learn to ride a bike because I rode around on training wheels all the time with my mother jogging behind me — I only learned to ride the bike when the training wheels came off and my mother, still jogging behind me assuring me that she would never let go, DID. The same is true for when I learned that sleeping away from home can be scary and uncomfortable, but also filled with adventure and excitement.
Looking back over my childhood, I remember that I learned most of life’s lessons typically, only, when my parents weren’t right there to protect me and, now, as a parent of a grown child, I realize how very hard it was to actually get the wrench out to remove the training wheels and then, ultimately, even after reassuring them that I never would…… to let go…
PROMISE! PROMISE!
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!
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