Ok, show of hands now.
Who all knows what fear is? Ok,
that's a decent amount of hands. I'm
content with that showing. Now, follow
up time. Who wants to share something
that they are afraid of? Ok, there's
definitely less hands up now. That's the
interesting thing about fear. Everyone
has felt it at one time or another but talking about it and sharing it is so
much harder. No one wants to put
themselves in a situation where they are required to be that vulnerable. It totally goes against most of our base
instincts for survival. The cool thing
is even at Ellie's young age, I can already see those instances when fear
manifests itself but that she also has the ability to accept help with
conquering her fear.
Example time. Since
today was such an epically beautiful day, we took advantage of the weather this
afternoon to head on a walk. Since it
was probably one of the final nice days we would have for the year, I wanted to
try and expose Ellie to something new just for fun. So with that in mind, we headed towards our
closest park. The unfortunate thing
about walking in that direction is that the sidewalks are very worn and uneven
due to some neglect at this point so I was met with two options. Option A is to walk on the sidewalk having to
ease the stroller over some of the more dramatic bumps and see Ellie freak out
and brace herself for impact on the smaller ones. Option B is to walk alongside the streets and
see Ellie whip her head to the side to glance as cars pass her by. I actually chose a combination of the two
which made things a little more interesting.
Once we reached the park, I wheeled the stroller up to the
swings. Picking Ellie up (careful to
leave Evy the elephant and her burp cloth behind), we walked up to the baby
swings. As I lifted Ellie away from my
chest, she stiffened her limbs in each direction which made it more difficult
to place her in the swing. After finally
getting her in place and holding her by her feet, I gently swung her back and
forth, careful to support her. By the
look on her face, I could tell she felt unsafe as the swing was still too big
for her. Taking her out, we headed to
the big kid swings where I sat her down upon my lap. Swinging back and forth, she stared up at me
smiling and laughing the whole time.
Ellie had true apprehension for experiencing swinging alone, but when
doing the same thing with my presence, her apprehension was replaced by pure
joy.
Seeing Ellie so happy always brings me a lot of happiness as
well. I hope as my daughter continues to
age, she won't feel like she has to face all of life's challenges alone. Sometimes it's necessary to ask for help to
get through the tough stuff so that we can reach the joys on the other side. Not the 'Almond Joy' candy bar because, well,
because no one likes those, but the real joys in life. #DaddyWrite
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