Today my daughter Sophie decided to climb a chain-link backstop at the nearby school. I knew she loved to climb things on the playground, but I had never seen her attempt something like this. I was a bit apprehensive as she started to scale the backstop and so I ran over and told her I would catch her if she fell. Shortly thereafter, and about two-thirds of the way up, she panicked and decided she needed help coming down. As I thought about it later, I helped her fail because I gave her an easy way out.
After a few minutes I saw her back at it and this time I didn’t let her know I was there in case she fell. She smoothly navigated to the top and proudly looked around to take in the glory of her accomplishment.
Of course, not to be outdone by her older sister, my darling Ellie did some fence scaling of her own. Next time I’ll have to make sure she has better shoes for the climbing.
How often do we go two-thirds of the way up our individual challenges and then allow ourselves to panic and turn back? How often do we undermine the growth of others because we talk more about how it’s okay if they fail than about how they can succeed?