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 “I’m not going on the ferry!” My four-year-old daughter yelled, her feet planted firmly on the dock.
Moments before, we had been lined up with her preschool class, happily playing “I Spy” and counting the cars filing off the boat. Now, everyone else had boarded. The crew and the class were waiting for me and my now-hysterical daughter to get on the boat.
“It’s going to sink,” she wailed. “I don’t want to go!”
I tried to reassure her that it wouldn’t sink. But finally, with the teacher motioning from the deck, I picked her up and carried her kicking and screaming on board.
Teacher Peggy asked what was wrong. Emily replied, “It’s going to sink! Austin told me so.”
My son, in a snit because he couldn’t go on this particular field trip, had informed her that he “didn’t want to go anyway, because the boat will just sink.” My imaginative, sensitive daughter took the words to heart but didn’t tell anyone until we were ready to get on the ferry.
Once we were on the boat, she and I said a prayer asking Jesus to keep us safe and help us have a happy time. Emily noticed the other children having fun, and she bravely went outside and enjoyed the view of the water and surrounding islands.
On the way off, the ferry attendants showered her with praise and extra stickers. Emily waved. “I want to do it again! That was fun!”
Not me. I was thinking, “Why didn’t Emily trust me? Why didn’t she feel safe just knowing she was with me?”
The answer came from a mom friend of mine. “She’s realizing she is independent from you. The boat really could have sunk, and you might not have been able to save her. She had to learn to get over the scary feelings herself. It’s not something you could do for her.”
I was ready for my daughter’s independence when she was eighteen, not four! But I realized that growing up happens in baby steps, starting in infancy. Children start by learning to feed and dress themselves, and they progress to a time many years later when they are completely self-sufficient.
Emily loves ferry rides now, and she has gradually outgrown her other childhood fears of the dark and loud noises. She did it largely on her own, trusting herself and how she feels, finding her own boundaries. I have come to accept that I won’t be there for her in every situation, but I find joy in the fact that I am helping to shape the person she is becoming. |
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