The other day I was in a playground with my 3.5 years old son. He climbed up the slide and was afraid of sliding down. So I went up to him and I offered to slide down together with him. To take his mind off his fear I gave him a job — to hold something and keep it safe while we slide down — and down we went. When we reached the ground he said that was not fun at all! He said he felt funny in his stomach and genuinely looked scared.
I told him, that’s fine, if you don’t like it, we don’t have to do it again. But to myself, I was thinking I cannot leave it there. I thought that if I don’t “put him back on the horse” immediately he will forever fear slides. So I decided to try again.
I waited for him to climb up again, and when he did, I came up and told him we can slide down together again, and that I promise that if he screams during the journey his stomach won’t feel funny. He was hesitant, and I was gentle but I persisted, and finally, he agreed to sit on my lap and slide down with me. Before sliding down he asked me to use my legs to slow down, which I promised to do. But I had no intention to do that — I wanted to prove to him that he can do it, that he can overcome his fear.
So down we went. And when we got to the ground, he burst into tears, crying that it was not fun at all and that he is too young for this slide. It took him a couple of minutes to gather himself and calm down. He was truly shaken. And so was I.
I felt terrible. I broke his trust and forced him into something which he clearly did not want while lying to him. I felt like a terrible father. I believe that in that instance I really was a bad father.
I spent a lot of time thinking about that incident. Why did I do it? What led me to force him, to lie to him? I believe sometimes I need to encourage him to do things he is afraid of, but this time I felt I had done it wrong. I also think that some lies are OK, but this one was clearly wrong. I figured that I was mostly driven by worry and fear this time, and not by his best interest. I was driven by the fear that he will forever be a soft kid, that this incident — him giving up to fear — is just an example of bigger withdrawals to come in the future. And I thought if I pushed him, I could prove him he can overcome it.
I believe it is obvious I did not achieve my goal. He is still afraid of that slide. Even worse, if anything, he has a bad memory of that experience, not a good one. And that memory probably does not drive him to try again.
The thing is that he is a soft kid. That’s just how he is. He is that kind of kid who is afraid of big slides, and who gets his toys snatched by other kids, and who nicely waits in line when other kids pass him and take the last piece of candy. I now understand that pushing him does not achieve any positive result. If he fails, he feels like a failure, and if he succeeds he feels that he must succeed and be brave to gain my love.
I think my job as a parent is not to push, or mold him, or change him into something he is currently not. He might change, he might not. That’s not for me to decide. I just need to be there and provide him with that safe place that always loves him, even when he gives in to his fear. And that’s hard — this lack of conrtol that we think we have triggers fear, and fear triggers reactions which sometimes are not the “correct” ones.
So what could I have done in that situation? I think a better response was to offer him another try — if he wants to or not is up to him — and if he doesn’t want to, not make a big deal out of it. Another thing I can still do is to synthesize situations that will slowly build his confidence — simply take him to smaller slides.
