Remember how hard it was to stand there when he took his first step without your hand to hold him up? If you were like me, you said a little prayer to anyone who might listen that he would be OK. Your heart was banging in your throat but you stood back and let him try. And you tried your best to look calm.
If you can completely embrace that calm when you really don’t want it, things always work better. It is so hard to convince our kids of something we don’t feel. But the more you embrace the calm and use it to battle your fears into submission, the stronger path you lay for your children to venture on their own.
Maybe the venture is just going into a doctor appointment on their own. Maybe it is something bigger like getting a job or walking around the corner to the bakery alone. But whatever it is, the key to helping your children find that self-assurance is for you to embrace that calm with everything you have got. Hold on tight to that calm, mom, and don’t let go.
And remember, everything will be OK.
