The Courage to Be

Time for another Emerson quote, this time from his address on Friendship:

"Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course, if he be a man he has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honor if you must needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside. Give those merits room. Let them mount and expand. Be not so much his friend that you can never know his peculiar energies."

Now try this on for size: 'Treat your child as a spectacle. She has merits that have nothing to do with you, which you cannot discover or appreciate if her life is driven by your agenda. Stand aside. Give those merits room. Let them mount and expand. Be not so much her mother/teacher that you can never know her peculiar energies.'

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I got to go to the park yesterday. Just me and my littlest guy. Oh, what a darling baby! He and I wandered about. First, we went barefoot down a rocky slope to shake a fence. Next we found the entrance to the tennis courts and tried to throw rocks through the chain-link. Then we found the playground where he impressed me with climbing the slide multiple times. Each time he had a moment of slipping or falling back, but each time he made it to the top and looked proudly at me. He experimented with his favorite hanging spots and found a good one to drop to the wood chips from. Then he threw some wood chips at me while I pretended to shriek and run away. We found a trickling water spigot which he sucked on, experimenting until he found an angle that would keep him the most dry while delivering the water to his mouth. This took a few attempts, so he did wind up quite wet. And he delighted in hitting the water around with his hands, trying to hit it with his feet, finding out if there was a critical mass on the ground for a good splash.

What a happy time we had! It was so relaxing and blissful. I learned so much watching him. I learned more about what he finds interesting. I learned about his determination. I observed his daring. It seemed he was glad to have an audience for it. I was present for a bit of his learning. What exactly that learning was, I might not be able to say. And he is certainly too young to tell me. But I am not so arrogant as to believe he wasn't learning all the same.

I might have led him right to the tennis court entrance when he found the fence, or demonstrated slipping the rock through the chain link rather than throwing it at it and watching it bounce off. Seeing his desire to be at the top of the slide, I could have just put him there. It was within my own arm's reach. I could have panicked when he chose a dangerous hanging spot. (Instead I stayed close spotting.) I might have stopped him from finding a place to jump from to see if he could make the landing. But make it he did, to surprise us both. I could have told him not to throw wood chips, or made a puddle big enough for him to splash in as he played with the water.

Each of my actions would have been "teaching" him something. Important lessons, right? Helping him to be safe, or maneuver life more easily. That is to say nothing of all the activities I could have initiated myself to make these moments count, to enrich his life with my wisdom or life mastery.

But what a loss would have occurred! I would have lost a moment to know something about his wisdom and life mastery, and about his "peculiar energies" which drove this time at the park, and will drive his whole life of adventure and discovery.

Furthermore, who is to say that anything I was going to teach would be more important to him than the very real lessons he was learning in the moment? It seems whatever lesson is of greatest importance is the lesson which serves us in the moment we are in. How can we say, "What you are learning now is okay, but what you REALLY need to know - THAT knowledge I posses and dole out on MY schedule"?

But we do say this. All the time. And if our children are unfortunate enough to believe us and let us teach them, not only do they miss all they might have discovered being given room to let their own talents and curiosities mount and expand, but we additionally teach their own curiosities and talents are of little worth or value when compared with our own greater wisdom and agenda.

I think we need to do more of what Emerson suggests: "Stand aside." Surprisingly, this takes great courage. Sometimes it takes great courage at the park when your 17 month old is hanging from a height above your head. But that is a small practice for the greater courage it takes to stand aside when your 7 year old hasn't shown an interest in reading. Or your 10 year old is way off the beaten curriculum track when it comes to interest in science. YOU know that this sort of patience will mean low scores on upcoming standardized tests, or just the grandparent initiated pop-quiz to make sure your homeschooled kids aren't "falling behind."

But it's time we reverence the learning process and the individual doing the learning MORE than we reverence these arbitrary measures of arbitrary learning. Which is not to say learning to read, or coming to understand certain scientific facts has no merit, OR that we cannot teach them. It IS to say, "This moment is perfect. Have the courage to first, let it BE. Discover what the moment has to teach. Discover what your child has to teach. AFTER you have done this, you may find your very important lesson isn't so important, or that your child has already learned it, or you will see clearly that it might be learned at a different time. Trust that there will be teaching moments, and they might look different than you expected, or come at times unplanned or inconvenient. But being led by the curiosity and necessity of the moment, your child will come to learn every needful thing. That is the way God designed life."

As parents, we hope in all the learning our kids do that they learn too to be courageous. It's time we master some of that courage ourselves. It's time to stand aside and know our children. It's time to be, and let our children know being too.