Brighterdays4you’s Weblog

When my daughter, Whitney was about five, a neighbor’s daughter on the bus teased her about her stuffed animal and pretended to take it away.  My daughter wanted her stufty back.  The neighbor lived about a mile down the road from us.  I encouraged her to go talk to the neighbor if she wanted her stufty back.  Whitney paced the driveway a couple of times as she considered whether she was willing to walk outside of the safe confines of the farm yard.  She then started walking down the road.  I watched her until she was almost there and then called the neighbor to warn her that she was coming and to watch for her.  Whitney learned from the neighbor’s daughter that she did not have her stufty.  (She learned later that the girl had thrown it into one of the back seats of the bus.  The driver found it and saved it for her.)

When she came home I encouraged her to see that if she wanted something bad enough, she could conquer her fear and go get it.  Later, my husband confronted her on walking to the neighbor’s and asked her not to do that again.  She came to me and said in a sad voice that she had not learned anything after all because she had done something wrong.  I reminded her that she still had learned that she could conquer her fear.  That lesson had not gone away even though dad was disappointed with her.  Needless to say, I did remind both of them that I had encouraged her to go and she did not deserve the confrontation by dad.  To this day, she remains a confident girl who is unafraid of reasonable risks.  She is willing to take on creative ventures and show them off.