The Benefits of Trouble

Photo: frotzed2/Creative Commons

I've written a bit about my son Stefen's developmental delays. He was born with low muscle tone, which has set his gross motor skills back more than a year, which has led to speech delays. (It's a domino effect: When your body doesn't work, everything else slows down.) When we were beginning to realize how extensive this was, my husband and I were worried about a great many things, of course, but one of the biggest was the fact that as he became a toddler, Stefen couldn't explore. At 15 months, he wasn't crawling; he couldn't even push himself up from lying to sitting. Setting aside our fears that he might not walk, we had no idea what effect an inability to move would have on his cognitive development.

"I want him to pull books off shelves and get into the cat food," I said. "I want him to bang pots together and just get into all kinds of trouble."

Be careful what you wish for.

See, he's doing those things now. He's now crawling, he's bouncing on his knees, he's pulling himself up to stand pretty much everywhere (he has a rather hilarious predilection for dangling into the empty bathtub). He will walk. He is nearly 2 and we're finally starting to babyproof.

So while all of this is wonderful news — the best news — the other day I found him scooting around with a candle in his mouth that he'd taken from a silver candlestick on a low bookcase shelf. I had a split-second vision of the candle ablaze, paused, and thought, "OK, now it's starting." It has more than started: This past weekend, on the day we planned to lower his mattress, in a show of unbridled joy as he repeatedly pulled himself up to stand in his crib and then plopped back down, he overshot his own (new) strength and tumbled headfirst out of the crib. (And that night, we were car No. 3 in a four-car accident, too. Safety was not with us on Saturday. No indeed.)

The thing is, we don't want to stop Stefen from pursuing his new devil-may-care lifestyle. If he tries to climb an ottoman and falls, that's fine. If he grabs something he shouldn't be grabbing, we take it from him and say no. If he has a tantrum and bangs his head against the floor, as he is wont to do, we've stopped physically stopping him (though there's a lot of "Stefen, don't bang your head" going on, to questionable effect). If he starts a task we know he can complete and he gets frustrated, then turns to us to finish it for him, we just cheer "You can do it!" and wait him out, even if he bites it in the process. We comfort him, of course. We kiss his head. But we don't always stop him, unless of course he's really in harm's way (like falling headfirst out of his crib).

This has all been rather trying, because letting your child be hurt or unhappy goes against everything you are as a parent. But sometimes allowing discomfort is the only way children learn how to do these things right. If he does it the dangerous way, maybe he won't do it again. If he gets stuck, he has to find a way out. Adults learn from their mistakes, and that's usually how they learn the most. Children (eventually) learn the same way. That, or they just age out of their behavior.

It should be noted that this is not limited just to trouble of the physical kind, of course. The nonphysical (usually) is the kind of trouble that's harder to grapple with than simply taking a header off the second-to-bottom stair. But it's the same philosophy: Depending on the severity of the trouble, sometimes all you can do at a certain point is sit back and keep your fingers crossed that they'll learn, and that they'll find their way out when they're stuck.

When your child begins to really explore, you've passed the point when they feel pain and people say, "Oh, it's worse for you than it is for them!" Falling four feet out of a crib onto his head was worse for Stefen than it was for anybody standing next to him. (On that note, I can't believe it happened and I was standing right there! What is that?!?) So the question is, as they get older and know better, can you monitor how your children test their physical selves? Should you?

There's that Citi commercial with the crazy chick standing on the very small rock millions of feet in the air that we all hope is CGI. Somebody left the gate open ... It got me thinking: What if that was your kid? Every time I see that commercial — in between beating my head against the wall because that song is a quite a nefarious earworm — I think, "There is a very fine line between adventurous and douchebag." Just as you learned your own limitations, your role as a parent is to give your child the confidence to stretch while imparting the wisdom to, well, not stand on a rock millions of feet in the air. With all due respect to rock climbers everywhere, that is insane.

Your children are supposed to be safe in your presence. It's Rule No. 1, which shares its placement alongside Love Them So Hard That They Always Know It. But they won't always be in our presence, and lord knows they won't always listen to us when they are. As I watch my son literally find his footing, I can only hope that my fears for his safety won't translate into him being afraid of the world, or being fearful of understanding his abilities. He's been so brave so far, and I hope he continues to be brave — but with bravery always comes risk. We just have to suck up the risk. He's able to bear-crawl now because this boy's parents and therapists have encouraged him and pushed him to do things his body did not do naturally. Stefen's physical therapist always says, "He's cautious, Mom." I hope I can trust my child to learn as he tries, bruises and cries along the way, and gauge for himself what is dangerous and what is prudent — and what is just fun.

The best best news is, he's having a ton of that.

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