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What’s the Monster Under Your Bed?

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Lion’s Whiskers asks: What’s the monster under your bed?

Our children are not the only ones who fear monsters lurking under the bed, in the closet, or around a dark corner.  As parents we, too, can lose sleep worrying about our child’s well-being.  To see if you are in good company, here’s a recent survey conducted by babycenter.com with 2,400 respondents (click here for the full results and complete article) about parents’ TOP 5 FEARS and what you can do about them (I’ve cut and pasted the results with my own ad lib):

1. The Fear: I’m afraid my child won’t get the education and opportunities she needs to reach her potential.

What You Can Do: Child development experts agree that it’s not necessary to buy every educational toy that hits the market or fill each hour of your child’s day with enrichment activities. When it comes to helping your child reach her potential, it turns out that less is often more.  Your presence, your attention, your love, for example, provide the most potent education for your child!  It can take emotional and intellectual courage to weigh the choices involved in our choosing the best educational path for our child, especially if you are swimming against tide and home-schooling, enrolling in an alternative educational program, advocating for a learning disabled child, or deciding less is more in terms of extracurricular activities. 

2. The Fear: I’m afraid someone will hurt or attack my child.
What You Can Do: Stay attuned and continue to nurture a securely attached relationship with your child to ensure the channels of communication stay open, so that if anything does happen you will be the first to know.  Have the “strange behavior” talk…instead of provoking stranger-danger fear, role-play and discuss common scenarios and ways to trust your gut when meeting or crossing paths with strangers and/or familiar people who behave strangely that you may wish to keep at a distance.  While teaching your child to navigate the neighborhood, point out examples of  “strange behavior” and how to walk confidently around those types of situations or people that raise red flags in terms of your child’s safety.  Teach your child who and how to tell if they’ve been hurt…physically, emotionally, or sexually.  Remember, in the vast majority of cases with all types of child abuse, the perpetrator is someone known to the child.
3. The Fear: I’m afraid my child will be injured in an accident, like a car accident.
What You Can Do: Remember that medical trauma center statistics show that the vast number of accidental injuries are preventable.  Teach your child street smarts, how to drive safe, how to be safe around electrical appliances, jump on the trampoline only when it has netting and not in the dark with 10 other pals, and not to answer the cordless phone in the bath!  Building physical courage muscles can help prepare a child to cope with injury, develop the kind of flexibility to move quickly, and build the necessary confidence to recover from physical challenges.  Practice some of our 5-Minute Courage Workouts on how to navigate the neighborhood, play with fire, and stay home alone safely. 
4. The Fear: I’m afraid my child won’t fit in socially or will get picked on.
What You Can Do: Experts say that children who experience violence at home are more apt to bully others, so it’s important to never treat your child violently or allow others to do so.  Empower your child through physical courage building exercises like enrolling in self-defense or martial arts classes.  Teach them to be the kind of morally courageous bystander who does the right thing, and how to use some of the social courage muscles associated with humor/deflection/ assertion/friendship, etc. when targeted by a bully themselves. 
5. The Fear: I’m afraid my child will have weight problems such as obesity or anorexia.
What You Can Do: The good news is that you can help protect your child from the dangers of obesity. Nobody — not your child’s doctor, not her gym teacher, not the director of the school lunch program, not even your child herself — has as much control over what she eats and how she spends her time as you do.  When we feel healthy and happy with our own bodies, and speak about ourselves in self-accepting/self-loving ways, our children learn to feel and do the same.  When peers or the press seem to be exerting unusual or unkind body image pressure, move in and advocate, support, and strengthen your child’s self-esteem and emotional, social and physical courage through your parent-child connection. 
Now, let’s hear from you! What’s your monster’s name and how do you tame your fear?

Discourage/Encourage: What’s a Parent To Do?

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Copyright Brian Dunne, Dreamstime.com

It turns out that raising courageous kids has a lot to do with knowing when to push them to face a challenge that may evoke fear, and when to pull back (ease off on the pressure, regroup, and become better prepared) so they can learn to pace themselves as they develop the confidence to face life all on their own.  Or as Kenny Rogers is famous for singing, and in our house the all-time favorite song from my husband’s bedtime repertoire:  “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.  Know when to walk away and know when to run.”

Dr. Lisa’s Parenting Tip:
THE PUSH-PULL FACTOR

Signs it’s time to PUSH:

*Your child asks for your help. Kids often have remarkable clarity about what they need.  We just need to be good listeners.  Sometimes, however, they don’t and/or there is a question behind their question.  For example,  “I need your help,” may in fact be “I don’t know what is expected? I need more information.” or “I don’t believe I can do it,” or “I don’t want to do this all by myself.” You might then ask, “Is there a question behind your question, like something more you need to know before doing this?”  Or, your could ask “How can I be most helpful?”  Help your child to tell you at least one way that you might be able to help push them towards success.  If they are stuck, then ask if you can offer some suggestions.  Sometimes asking for help is about a need for parent-child connection, compassion, and/or the vulnerability inherent with developing the courage to try new things. 

 *Decide if it’s important to you both. Maybe you’d like your daughter to rock climb, but it isn’t her   

  thing.  But, you believe learning an instrument is important for overall emotional and cognitive 
  development—even when the practices get dull and require big-time stick-to-itiveness and the occasional
  push to practice.  Differentiate between a dare and the genuine learning experience that courage
  challenges can provide. 
*Do they have all the necessary skills and capabilities? We can’t expect our kids to jump off the 
  diving board the first time they put on a swimsuit.  Your role as a parent is to be your child’s
  first teacher.  Take the time to teach your child, step-by-step, the necessary skills associated with the   
  task at hand.  You want your child to take responsibility with household chores, for example, walk them
  through how you expect them to do each chore, teach them to fold laundry or load the dishwasher, 
  before asking them to do it on their own.
*Practice makes perfect.  Rehearse and role-play with your child what it is you wish them to learn. The
  more mental practice—the more assured success.  Just ask any professional athlete trained in
  psychological skills training (PST):  a winner visualizes the race and the win before it happens (Weinberg
  & Gould, 1999).  
*Make sure the safety net is in place.  Soon, you won’t be around to catch every fall.  In fact, even if you are right there you may miss.  The research is clear, kids raised in bubble wrap aren’t equipped to handle life’s bumps and bruises.  But, you can ensure that your child knows how to ask for help and that he/she believes in his/her inherent worth—regardless of success or failure.  Self-confidence is the strongest net of all. 
*You’ve dipped your toes in the water a few times and now it’s time to dive.  The longer you wait; the more apprehension is bound to build.  Strike while the iron is hot.  Teach you child to pay close attention to their thinking and the signs in their body that signal readiness: “I can do this” thoughts, a fluttery heart combined with a conviction of purpose, a narrowing of the gaze on the goal in their mind’s eye, a feeling of excitement—even if it means reframing fear. (Based on the fact that excitement and anxiety trigger similar centers and neurotransmitter release in the brain and nervous system).

To summarize, let’s use the acronym: P.U.S.H.

P is for prepare for battle (make sure your child has the tools for success)
U is for understand the goal (make sure your child agrees the goal is important)
S is for safety net (make sure you have a back-up plan or a way to save face)
H is for hope (make sure your child is inspired and confident in his/her thinking)

Okay…Get Ready, Get Set, PUSH!

Signs it’s time to PULL back:
*Your kid asks you to back off.  It can’t be said enough: kids have a lot of clarity.  When we honor their boundaries and limit-setting, whilst empowering them to listen to themselves, we lend support to their natural impulse towards learning, curiosity, and openness to experience.

*Fear can’t be reframed as excitement.  Fear is a life-saving signal to play close attention when danger is present—whether real or imagined.  Flush out the monsters under the bed; listen to what they have to say about what’s really going on in your child’s head. If your child’s willingness to try new things suddenly or has never been very strong, you might even need help from a mental health professional in cases of clinically significant anxiety. 

*Figure out whose goal it is?  Do you feel incredible regret because you quit piano in grade school and now can’t play an instrument?  Are you channelling your unmet desires in life into a pint-size version of yourself?  What’s in it for your child?  If you keep meeting with resistance and both of you can’t answer this question, honestly, it might be time to find a different goal or courage challenge. 
*One or both of you believes the thought “I can’t do this.”  It’s time to deconstruct a few of those self-defeating thoughts first.  Instead of trying to fight your child’s fear or lack of self-confidence, take a different tact.  What we notice, we get more of.  Therefore, if we notice that they lack self-confidence and continue to focus on that lack, we will get more of it.  Try asking, “Do you need more information about what I’m asking you to do?  How can I help you break apart this task into smaller pieces, so it can feel more manageable?”  Remind yourself and your child, “For every problem there is a solution.  It’s just up to us to discover what that solution might be.” 

Play the “What if…?” game to generate possible solutions and help extinguish fear and restore mental and emotional calm.  You may be surprised by the insightful conclusion at the end of this game.

Parent:  “What if you try to skateboard and you fall off?” 
Child: “I might get hurt!” 
Parent: “What if you get hurt?” 
Child: “I’ll have to get you to find me a bandage or go to the doctor” 
Parent: “What if you have to wear a bandage or go to the doctor?” 
Child: “I might be embarrassed!” 
Parent:  “What if you are embarrassed?”
Child:  “I might get really red in the face.”
Parent:  “What if you get red in the face?”
Child:  “I’ll look funny and probably make you laugh.  And then I might laugh, too.  But, I guess that would mean I was okay again.”
            
 
To summarize, let’s use the acronym: P.U.L.L.
P is for provide (make sure you provide and rehearse the tools for success, gently pace the number of new challenges or experiences you are providing, and then provide the freedom of choice to do it on their own)
U is for understand (make sure you both understand that the strongest of all motivational pulls is intrinsic—motivation that comes from within, not from some external prize (Pink, 2009)).
L is for listen (make sure you listen closely to your child’s words, what he/she needs to succeed, and focus on his/her strengths)
L is for love (make sure you love your child even when he/she is scared, angry, or confused and pushes you away. Love your child enough to let go in the moments they need to do it “all by myself!”)
Okay, Ready? Set? No? PULL BACK—either yourself or your child!
Sources:
Pink, D. (2009). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. NY: Riverhead Books.
Weingberg, R. & Gould, D. (1999). Foundations of sport and exercise psychology. (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Bedtime Stories

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Lisa’s post about snuggling raises for me an image of the time-honored tradition of bedtime stories. We have the parent and child (or children) snuggled together with a book; consider how many things are going on in the scene:
1. Bonding and attachment, as Lisa has explained;
2. The beginnings of literacy, a child looking at words while the parent reads;
3. The transmission of culture (values, traditions, story themes, information) through the storybook being read;
4. An opening of the imagination and a call to empathize with another person or other people, i.e. the characters in the story;
5. Development of focus, attention, concentration and listening skills.
6.  You might also notice that the child is on her mother’s left side, a preference across cultures (and regardless of right-handedness or left-handedness) and even across species.  You can read more about  the significance of this for right-brain development in Lisa’s post about how we hold our babes.

There are probably lots of other things going on as well. It seems like stating the obvious that this (hopefully) nightly ritual is much much more than entertainment, ideally an experience that nourishes and encourages both child and parent. What I’d like to propose is that this rich moment can involve other kinds of stories than the ones found in the pages of a picture book. Don’t get me wrong – I make my living writing books for children. I would never suggest not using books at bedtime. What I am suggesting is that we can also expand our definition of what bedtime stories might be.
If you have photographs of family and friends, print them out and put them in an album – not an elaborate scrapbook, just a plain old snapshot book. Pictures of yourself as a child, pictures of grandparents who may be far away, pictures of people you used to know but haven’t seen in years – these are all springboards for life stories.

When you share a part of your life at this relaxed and open interlude between waking and sleeping, you give a piece of yourself to your child to carry into dreams. This is what’s called a liminal moment, a threshold between one state and another. Your child is truly on her way to another world, like a hero stepping into the fairy realm; this piece of yourself is like one of the talismans the hero carries to finish the quest.

One of the things these stories help with is the creation of identity, an understanding of where the child fits in the world. If your child has an answer for the question, “Where do I come from?” then the question of “Where do I return to?” is easier to answer (even though they aren’t always the same answer). Courage to leave home (both literally and figuratively) depends on the strength of this identity. Especially in uncertain times, it seems to me, when people are losing houses or relocating to find work, giving children a secure sense of family identity is essential.
My daughter, herself, has a little snapshot book. In it are a half-dozen pictures of her family in Ethiopia, including the most precious treasure of all, a photo of her birth mother. When we look at these pictures together she can share stories of her own with me, although even she admits it’s getting hard to tell which stories are memories and which ones are dreams. “Long ago and far away” is literally true for her, but whether they are true or dreams, they are part of who she is. The lion of Ethiopia is part of her identity, and will always be part of where she comes from, and part of what will give her courage.



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I HEART Snuggling!

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Something you need to know about me:  I’m a big fan of snuggling! Anything to put-off getting out of bed and delay the morning rush-to-school routine, especially on rainy mornings. Snuggling is one of the most important ways I have bonded with my children. And a secure parent-child bond you now know is highly correlated with being well-adjusted and being less likely to engage in risky behaviors.  Even more importantly, securely attached kids are more likely to possess emotional and social courage. 

Of course as my kids have grown, snuggling can now be as rare and special as spotting a shooting star across the night sky.  Hugging my now 5′ 10″ thirteen-year old is sometimes as awkward as hugging a wall.  And my fifth grade daughter announced to me after her first day of school, as I tucked her into bed: “Mom, you need to know that as a fifth grader I will not be snuggling with you much anymore.  Fifth graders just don’t do that.”
Which got me thinking: How do we continue to nurture the parent-child bond, and thus the courage necessary to love another human being, when snuggling ends? 

Knowing what I do about the importance of physical touch and affection to help us human beings stay connected, I still sneak in as many hugs as I can.  And, with resignation, I accept my kids’ need for more space at times and cherish those momentary hugs.  Each time my kids now eschew my embraces, I secretly want to clutch my chest and fall dramatically to the floor—mostly for the hopeful effect of changing their minds.  I can be kind of manipulative when it comes to getting my needs met.  Lucky for my kids, I’m a little more evolved than that. I also know all the important stuff about honoring our kids’ boundaries.  Eight years of psychology graduate school will drill good interpersonal boundaries, if nothing else, into you.  It’s very important that we take our kids lead when it comes to their need for physical space and privacy as they grow—even if it means you being the first to shut the bathroom door for privacy. 

Copyright Andres Rodriguez, Dreamstime.com

I’m relieved when I tell a friend that my snuggling days may be over, and she shares that her fourteen-year old daughter still crawls into bed on Saturday mornings to chat about her week.  I love seeing a very tall, and in my books very cool, college student wrap his/her arms lovingly around a parent walking down the street.  These snugly kids aren’t wallflowers in life.  They aren’t weak because they still want their parents’ arms around them.  On the contrary, securely attached children waltz into the world with confidence.  

The great thing about snuggling is that it calms the sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system–that ‘fight-or-flight’, ‘tend-or-befriend’ response system.  It can be snuggles with your kid or even the family pet (a highly worthwhile family investment for the ‘tween or teen years).  The sympathetic nervous system doesn’t differentiate skin from fur.   In fact, most positive social interactions involve that same calming hormone oxytocin that I’ve written about in previous posts.  I also notice that it is in those moments of calm presence with my kids, that they share the juiciest bits of wisdom. 
Let’s be clear, these days “snuggling” looks more like all of us piled into bed watching comedy on Wednesday nights.  Or me lying in bed reading, when my son collapses on my bed (after his supposed bedtime) to tell me about a funny YouTube clip or how many ergs he pulled at rowing practice.  I have to remember that these moments are in increasingly dwindling supply, so I put down my book and just listen. 

In some ways one of my primary “love languages” (physical touch), according to Dr. Chapman (1992), is now shifting to match my children’s desire for words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, and/or receiving other gifts I have to offer (not just material goods!) Click here and you can take Dr. Chapman’s assessment to figure out your primary love language.  Dr. Chapman is a pastoral and marriage counselor who believes that we all have five common love languages to express our care and love, some of us favor one or more particular love expressions over others…you can decide if his work is useful to you after taking the assessment.

Fortunately for me, and I believe for my daughter, her decision to cut off snuggles only lasted about a week.  The first sign of social or homework distress at school, she was back in my arms to confide her troubles and share her successes.  And we’ve been reading books together again at bedtime, when we can, to make sure to have connect time at the end of the busy days. 

So, since snuggling’s back on…my girl crawls in beside me when I decide to have a quick nap yesterday.  She’s been feeling sick this week and particularly soft, open, and slightly vulnerable.  We relax into a kind of meditative state where we both access our most heartfelt questions and cares.  I ask her, “Do you think I’ve raised you to be courageous in life?”  (I know…it’s a loaded question now that she sees me writing a blog, researching, and coaching parents about nurturing courage in kids.) Fortunately, for me, she’s fiercely loyal and always tells the truth. “Yeah, mom, you have.  You don’t prevent me from trying new things because you are worried I might hurt myself.  You don’t fuss over us like that.  And you don’t push me too hard.  Like the way you’ve helped me with riding roller coasters.  You respect that I don’t like them, but keep offering me the chance to ride with you if I want to.  You let me make my own choice.  And because you do that, it makes me want to try new things.  It makes me trust myself.” 

So there you have it, the kernel of wisdom so integral to nurturing courage in our kids:  know when to push and when to step back. 

Keep offering up those hugs, your listening presence, and modeling the emotional and social courage it takes to be truly connected with family and friends…and know it’s a healthy sign of your kids’ own development when they feel safe enough to say “No”, “I need some space”, or “I’m not ready to try the roller coaster (or whatever the courage challenge may be) yet.”

Be sure to read my next post “Discourage/Encourage: What’s a Parent To Do?” for tips on how to know when it’s time to push your child towards facing a fear or conquering a courage challenge, and when to step back, regroup, and let them take the lead. 
Sources:
Uvnäs-Moberg (1998). Oxytocin may mediate the benefits of positive social interaction and emotions. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 23, (8), 819-835. doi:10.1016/S0306-4530(98)00056-0 
Cooper, M. L., Shaver, P., & Collins, N. Attachment styles, emotion regulation, and adjustment in adolescence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, (5), 1380-1397.

The Briar Patch

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“What are your favorite stories?” I ask my daughter.

Without hesitation the answer always comes back, “Anansi stories.”

Anansi the Spider is a trickster in hundreds of tales from Africa. The trickster figure appears in story traditions the world over, be it Loki or Coyote or Hare or Bre’r Rabbit or Clever Jack. This is the character who succeeds through wits and wiles. My own favorite stories that fit this model were the travels of Odysseus, celebrated by Homer for his cunning

– the creator of the Trojan Horse, the escape artist and blinder of the dreaded Cyclops, inventor of one clever plan after another. Loved and protected by Athena, the goddess of wisdom, Odysseus survives the Trojan War and the journey back to Ithaka by using his intellect.

One of the things I find fascinating about Trickster tales is that almost as often as the Trickster succeeds, the Trickster fails. “Hoist with his own petard,” was the Shakespeare quote my family pulled out in conversation again and again (it basically means getting caught when your brilliant plan backfires). Sometimes the trickster gets out of the frying pan only to land in the fire. It seems that clever plans that are self-protective succeed; clever plans that exploit others often fail. “You can boil me in a pot of water but please whatever you do, don’t throw me in the briar patch!” saves Bre’r Rabbit’s life. Tricking the lion and stealing his skin in order to get the baboons to wait on him gets Hare into big trouble in a traditional tale from Botswana.

These stories are great, juicy fun. As I see it, however, there is a subtle danger in framing intellectual dexterity as “trickery.” The physical prowess of heroes who vanquish their enemies by might and main is generally celebrated as bravery. The intellectual prowess of heroes who vanquish their enemies with brainpower is labeled trickery. Somehow, the invisible weapons and armor that our imagination provides have been less praiseworthy than the visible sword and muscles of the knight. This sets up the prickly antagonism between brains and brawn that we continue to see played out today: geeks vs. jocks.  Do we really want to favor physical courage over all the other six types of courage?

FYI: this is NOT the path to intellectual courage
I say no.  It has to be okay to be smart. Innovative problem-solving can no longer be the tool reserved for the trickster alone. Today, we live in a world that resembles less and less the world of knights and tests of strength; today we need the nimble mind of Bre’r Rabbit, the resourcefulness of Coyote, the creativity of Anansi. I choose cunning Odysseus over mighty Achilles. I want to encourage the trickiness of creative intellect, and not with standardized testing. If the trickster tales tell us anything, it is that the thorniest problems don’t appear with multiple choice answers on the page: the multiple choices must all arise in the mind of the hero.  Developing our children’s intellectual courage may be just what we need to solve the problems of tomorrow.
Go here for some tips on how to tell a story, such as a trickster story, to your child.

The Way We Hold Our Babies

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It turns out that as important as the skin-to-skin contact we have with our babies in their early years, is the way we hold them.  Unrelated to handedness and widespread across cultures, mothers cradle their babies on the left side.  Even chimps and gorillas favor the left arm hold.  Why, you ask?  Apparently, a few researchers have found that the left-cradling tendency promotes right hemisphere-to-right hemisphere communication between mother and child (Manning et al., 1997; Harris, Almergi, & Kirsch 2000).

The right hemisphere is not only deeply connected with the autonomic nervous system, but is also specialized in perception, the recall of spatial patterns of touch in nonverbal memory, and facilitates affective information necessary for normal brain maturation.  What’s important to know about the right hemisphere is that as the dominant emotional processing center, it controls vital functions that enable human beings to maintain a homeostatic state to support both survival and help cope with stressors. Right hemispheric dominance in terms of facial recognition, emotional information processing, and limbic system homeostasis suggests that both emotional and social intelligence—intrinsic to the development of courage—are dependent on right hemisphere stimulation and maturation through secure attachment. 

From the first moments that an infant is held, the holder is not only engaging the already on-line limbic system’s amygdalae (hence an infant’s early startle response); but right-to-right hemispheric communication also supports analysis of information conveyed directly from the body.  That is to say, when an infant is experiencing discomfort, or some immunological response, his/her cues to us are best received and recognized through right-to-right hemispheric communication. Schore (1994) proposes that secure attachment relationships directly influence the development of right brain psychosocial–neuroendocrine–immune communications which, in turn, directly affect a child’s coping capacities.  Think back to the first moments that you held your child, did you hold them with your left arm or your right?
The early days of holding our infant are the basis for the earliest learning of what is now commonly known as emotional intelligence (Salovey & Mayer, 1989/1990).  Emotional intelligence refers to a set of skills associated with the processing of emotional information, accurate perception and appraisal of emotions in oneself and others, appropriate expression of emotion, and the adaptive regulation, planning, and motivation associated with emotions in such a manner as to enhance living.

Emotion is the linchpin that enables us to adapt psychologically, physiologically, and behaviorally to have the courage to meet the challenges in our lives. 

The next time your daughter is playing with her dolls, if she does that kind of thing, check out how she holds her doll.  Not your son, though, this appears to be a uniquely maternal instinct. 
Tonight, cuddle up with your child in your left nook, gaze down into his/her eyes reflecting love, read or tell a story, and watch the images formed from the words dance in your child’s eyes and imagination.  Delight in, celebrate, and rest easy in the wisdom of Mother Nature and the strength of your secure attachment to one another. 
Upcoming post:  Ways to stimulate right-brain development that don’t just include cuddling ‘n snuggling!
Sources: 
Harris, L., Almergi, J., & Kirsch, E. (2000). Side preference in adults for holding infants: Contributions of sex and handedness is a test of imagination. Brain & Cognition, 43, 246–252.
Manning, J., Trivers, R., Thornhill, R., Singh, D., Denman, J., Eklo, M., & Anderton, R. (1997). Ear asymmetry and left-side cradling. Evolution and Human Behavior, 18, 327–340.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J.D. (1989/1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, cognition, and personality. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, (3), 185–211.
Schore, A. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schore, A. (2001). Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22, (1-2), 7-66.

Raising a Leader

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It’s funny how talking can bring things into action. Since Lisa and I began working on this project about teaching our children courage, we’ve naturally been discussing the topic with our kids. I’ve been sharing more stories with a courage theme with K., and Lisa and I have both talked with our girls about what we call “courage challenges.” Everyone has a different discomfort zone, and the more we can find ways to push against our own boundaries and limitations, the stronger our courage becomes.
“But why keep doing more courage challenges?” K. wanted to know. “We already did one last week.”

“Courage is like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it becomes, so that when you have really big challenges as an adult you’ll be able to face them and do what you know is right and good.”
“So what have you done as a grown-up that needed courage?” she asked me, not surprisingly.
I resisted the temptation to ask if she thought adopting an 8-year-old from a foreign country as a single mother might take a bit of steel. Instead, I reminded her that I had raised a guide dog puppy.
This is something I did in my early thirties. I think there was some magical pay-it-forward thinking involved, the belief that this good deed would protect me from losing my eyesight, one of my irrational fears. I volunteered as a “puppy raiser” for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, and spent just over a year with a beautiful yellow lab named Wheaton. My job was to socialize her, teach her basic obedience, expose her to a wide variety of experiences so that when she was old enough for her serious training as a guide dog, she would be ready-steady. I loved walking her around town: she had a cape that identified her as a guide dog in training, and I fancied it made her look like a four-legged superhero.
The almost unanimous response to what I was doing was, “I could never do that. I just love dogs so much, it would be too hard to give the dog back.”
I was always at a loss to find a polite reply. I love dogs too, you know! So much! After all, guide dogs should be raised by people who love dogs and respect their potential. What really surprised me was the general unwillingness to take on something that would be hard. Many things are hard! Most things worth doing are hard! I knew from the start that it would be hard to give the dog back; indeed, when I got the call to bring Wheaton back to the center to start her training as a guide dog, I was heartbroken. But when I went to her graduation ceremony, and saw her guide her new owner across the stage, my heart was repaired. I promise you, it was fully repaired by that sight.  I realize that many people already face huge courage challenges every day, and I can understand them not wanting to take on another.  It’s the people who aren’t being challenged (or challenging themselves) that I wonder about.

So this was the story I shared with K. I had already shared much of it with her before. She nodded. “I want to do it,” she said. “That will be my courage challenge.”
“Okay,” I replied.
“Really? We can do it?” She was clearly astonished at my readiness to agree.
“I think you understand what’s involved.”
“We have to give the dog back, I know. I’ll probably cry a lot more than you did. I’m just a kid.”
This kid has already had a lot of loss in her life, more than most 11-year-olds, but her heart is very strong. She is not afraid to cry.  Looks like emotional courage to me.