“Ma! Watch me do a backflip!”
My teen son calls to me as he hurls himself through the air. My heart stops for a fraction of a second, wondering if this will be the time disaster befalls him.
He’s obsessed with landing the perfect backflip. After a summer of practice, he finally nailed it and I felt a tiny surge of satisfaction. Other moms might tout their children’s GPAs, awards, or community service projects; I’m tickled that my kid taught himself to rotate in the air, land in a standing position, shake his mane of golden hair out of his face and smile with delight.
As with many new skills he learns, pride is mixed with fear. Will this be the day he cracks his head open? Will he suffer a concussion and make school harder than it already is? Will he break his neck and spend the rest of his life paying the price for the carefree joy of feeling his lithe body spin in the summer sunlight?
Before our children were born, we childproofed the house. Sharp corners of coffee tables were covered with spongy protectors, household chemicals were placed out of reach, and toilets and cupboards were latched shut. I was determined no harm would befall this child on my watch.
How wrong I was.
Most things our children learn make us want to simultaneously shout for joy and wrap them in bubble wrap. When my boy took his first wobbly steps, I hovered over him, waiting to catch him before his diapered behind could hit the ground with a plop. Inevitably the day came when I couldn’t save him from a crash, and he sported his first black eye.
Bumps and bruises became a fact of life, and I was both amused and terrified. Duct-taping plastic milk crates to skateboards and racing them through the neighborhood is an obvious recipe for disaster, but it also seemed like a creative idea. I hollered, “Be careful!” but perhaps neither quickly enough nor loud enough, and soon I found myself mopping blood off scraped knees and elbows.
I quickly learned that anytime I heard the words “Look, Ma!” the potential for catastrophe was rife. Sledding down the stairs on pillows, playing circus with his sister, catching a baseball with his eyebrow—there’s no way to keep an active boy from injury. I ticked off the milestones: first stitches, first cast, first medical boot.
I struggle to find the balance between letting my son play freely and scaffolding his safety. I love the look of unfettered glee on his face when he lands a backflip; I’ll never forgive myself if letting him do so causes irreversible damage.
As he gets older, the stakes get higher. He hasn’t outgrown the childlike activities which lead to bumps and bruises and broken bones, but soon he’ll be adding adult pastimes to his repertoire. If backflips aren’t enough to scare me, there’s driving to consider. No amount of classes and safety lectures will quell the feeling of pride mixed with panic the first day I see him pull out of the parking lot by himself. My life will become both easier and more terrifying with my son behind the wheel. He can run to the store for a gallon of milk, while I sit at home feeling my heart pound in my chest, listening for approaching sirens, and wondering why it’s taking him so long to return.
Right behind driving comes dating. Watching teens work out their first budding romances is a lot like watching them do backflips—joy and bravery and tightly coiled energy are punctuated by the twinges of what-ifs, the knowledge of everything that could go wrong. I want to see him soar with grace and beauty before sticking the landing; I’m also conscious of all that he could break if he lands wrong.
The coming-of-age trifecta wouldn’t be complete without alcohol. As parents, we’d like to believe that our children are too smart, too careful, too well-raised to experiment stupidly. Just as we believed decades ago that we could cover the sharp edges of the world with foam padding to keep our babies safe, we want to believe that we have counseled and lectured our young adults enough to protect them. We are probably mistaken.
Perhaps the scariest part of watching my son grow up is understanding that, unlike the moment before he soars into a backflip, he will not always yell, “Look, Ma!” seconds before rushing headlong into danger. Even if I’m watching carefully, there may come a moment when I’m not fast enough or strong enough to catch him. All I can do is watch him jump and hope that, as with the perfect backflip, he lands on his feet, flashes a triumphant grin, and walks away unscathed.
While I find I can do my best to protect my children by establishing physical boundaries to save them from physical harm, it’s the moral boundaries I try hardest to instill in them so as to avoid emotional scars now and in the future. My biggest fear in life is that I will not succeed in this mostly invisible area.