Turning Fear into Leaps of Faith

I’m reading the e-book, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, by Lenore Skenazy, and it really helped me zero in on our culture’s current parenting focus of fear. The author helped me realize why I have less fear than what I’m seeing around me in other parents — because I’ve eliminated a lot of the causes of this fear. The biggest culprit is television, particularly the news and all the crime dramas. Those in television now compete with the Internet, so to capture our attention, more sensationalism than ever before is harnessed to get us to watch. I long ago gave up the news as I started fearing a dangerous criminal was around every corner. As for the crime dramas, I remember when CSI first came out and I thought it was so interesting. As the season progressed, so did the details showed in the re-enactment portion of the show. As my fear began to increase, I quickly chose to turn the television off and cease watching that show. It wasn’t long after that diverse crime show choices exploded for our daily dose of fear-mongering.

Click the image for a great post about overcoming fear.

Skenazy takes each type of fear we parents worry about and shows that statistically they’re unfounded. An example was Halloween candy. Every Halloween we’re warned about poison or razor blades in the candy, and yet, when a researcher went specifically looking to see if any child has ever died of poisoned Halloween candy, he came up with precisely zero, looking all the way back to the 1950s. So, from where do these fears stem? The bombardment of visual and sensationalized media that prompts our fight or flight brain stem to begin to fear.

How does this fear manifest in the education realm? It’s a common fear that we’re going to “mess up” our children’s education by making bad choices for them, or not doing enough for them, or not knowing enough. Anything chosen off the beaten track is an opportunity to fear. Choosing to homeschool. Fearful! Questioning the broken child mentality. Scary! Choosing a different scope and sequence than found in school. Eeek! Vying for worst parent award lurks around every decision.

The more you feed the fear, the bigger and more widespread it becomes.

This fear thing is huge, isn’t it? I wrote one part of my perspective here about the choices we make and avoiding fear and recognizing life is a process, not a destination.  I think the main belief I hold that allows me to live without fear in raising my children is that I believe this life is about imperfection, and all that we learn and grow from through the natural ups and downs of life.

For some reason, our biggest fear as parents, is being party to a “down” part of life for our children. In other words, we know there will be downs in life, but we don’t want to be the source of one of them for our children. I guess that’s human nature to want to spare our loved ones. But, the fact is, we can’t prevent the downs. The other thing is that we’re always trying to do the best we can with what we know. So, when we discover we could have done something differently to cause less struggle, we can either beat ourselves up and say we made a “mistake” and think we “failed,” or we can learn something and try new things with the new information and move on and grow from it.

Inevitably, after one of my right-brained workshops, I’ll have someone say, “I’ve got an 11 year old I’ve been doing all the wrong things with based on your information. So, since I’ve screwed him up, is there any hope to fix it?” It always makes me sad to hear this because I know that parent was doing the best they could with what they knew. How are we supposed to know all things? Because of our pure intent, when we find new information that may help bring more happiness in one’s life, we just explain to our child, “Hey, I discovered this new information, and I’m really excited about it, and it explains so much of what we’ve been struggling through, and I think we’re going to find so much more joy now that we understand these things. Woot!” Because here’s the deal…you both went through the struggle. You as the parent wouldn’t choose struggle purposely if you knew different. So, why do we have to beat ourselves up for not being all knowing? No one is all knowing! We do the best we can with what we know.

Drop the guilt.

And, if you can process all that perspective, then you can also drop the fear. Because, guess what? You’re going to make choices that cause frustration. And when you see frustration, it means there’s still something to learn, so you keep searching and trying to figure it out. That’s the process! So, what I did is replaced fear of not being perfect and knowing how to do everything or that it means I’m messing someone I love up, and I replace it with faith in the process/journey of life…for myself and for my child. Because, guess what? They’ll need that same faith in the process when they’re making decisions and not being all knowing, too. You’re their model on doing that with grace 🙂

Interestingly, on the television show, The Biggest Loser, tonight, it was about facing their fears. One father always needed to feel in control. But thinking he could be in control actually made him lose control…through eating. It was hard for him to let go and just trust the process. Good, bad, and ugly. Another young person didn’t pursue singing because she felt she had to be perfect in order to try, so she didn’t, and until she could be perfect, she was going to be unhappy. This young lady realized that her life can’t be perfect; no one’s life can be perfect! It was the epiphany she needed to start living her life…taking risks, trying, failing, trying again, changing directions, living… Where did these beliefs come from? Do we forget to help our children know how to fail? to risk? to be vulnerable? to have weaknesses? And know all of these things are just the flip side of the coin of success, being comfortable, being safe, having strengths? Do we teach these things to our children by showing them how to have faith in ourselves, trust their instincts, take risks, keep going, knowing you’re always good enough right now?

The more you develop faith in the process, the easier it becomes to enjoy your children and feel joy. I remember one person saying to me how scary the leap of faith felt as she contemplated traveling down the natural right-brained learning path. But, she happily reported that after she closed her eyes and leapt, and experienced how joyful the natural path was for both her and her son, when she looked back, she said the leap wasn’t as big as she had imagined.

Question: What fear did you have in your child’s education that you now find you have faith in?