Fostering Bravery and Independence in our Children

Would you consider your baby to be brave?
I think Joey was about three months old when I first called him “brave”. He was never afraid to test his own limits, take his own body as far as it would go. Whether it was contemplating driving his toy tractor off the coffee table or taking bigger bites of food than mom was comfortable with.

It was a lot later in Cece’s life when I started referring to her as brave or courageous. She has never been in a big hurry to do much. And she is really sensitive, too. Loud noises or a lot of stimulation, for example, make her a little anxious. Then all of a sudden she found her movement. Girl is no longer timid, in fact, she’s a little audacious.

I believe that fostering these traits, like fearlessness, bravery and audaciousness is a great thing. But they are also traits that seem to take a back seat to other more “important” things like learning manners, speech development, or even academics. 

I’ve been around lots of kiddos, and it’s easy to spot the “brave” ones. They are commonly considered, and called, “wild.”

Bravery can also be wrongly attributed as stubbornness or hard headedness. Trust me, Joey is all of these things. But I really believe it’s the bravery behind it that forces these other traits forward as well.

Being an independent, brave little person can be quite the undertaking. It sets you apart, invites labels, and sometimes, keeps other children and parents from joining you because it’s hard to “keep up.”

I see this happen often, with lots of different groups of kids. And it can be terrifying as a parent to wonder if my own children will be left out because they are brave enough to be left out. 

But there are so many positive things that accompany a brave trait. For example, with bravery comes independence. With independence comes responsibility. With responsibility comes sound problem solving. With problem solving comes satisfaction. With satisfaction comes self awareness. With self awareness comes empathy, kindness and compassion. I could go on.

It also may be easy to try and foster these traits the opposite way. Work to foster empathy and you could get self awareness, and so on. But to be honest, that only really works for adults. And even then, most of the time it switches back anyway. For example (you know this is a FRIENDS reference):

Rachel was a spoiled, non-independent brat when she left Barry at the altar and came to find Monica. Her empathy, responsibility, self awareness was pretty non-existent. UNTIL she figured out how to be brave. She cut up her credit cards, stopped taking hand outs, and jumped in with two feet to the real world. As the seasons continue, we watch her grow into a kindhearted and compassionate human, friend, mother and successful businesswoman. 

Would we as adults truly know empathy if we didn’t know bravery? Probably not. 

For kids, especially under six years old, actions will always speak louder than words. Teaching a six month old how to be gentle with the cat is nearly impossible by words alone. We have to show them, and usually, they will test the limit until they learn otherwise. A scratch or a hiss from the cat will ensue, we will have seen all the traits fall into place:

They were brave to taunt the cat. Independent enough to follow it around. Responsible enough to touch it, even if not gently. The cat pushes back, showing the child how to problem solve to touch it more gently next time in order to keep the cat around. They are then satisfied when they can touch the cat and he purrs. They are then self aware enough to know how to be gentle. And with that, empathetic to be kind to the cat. 

I don’t think we could have taught that child how to be empathetic towards the cat without going through each of those steps. 

It’s scary to foster these traits, particularly in this order. It usually, more often than not, ends up with some sort of physical, though minor, harm. A scratch on the knee. A bump on the head. A gag from putting the straw too far down their throat. And this is where we have to come in as problem solving, brave parents and know when it’s time to mitigate risk over fostering bravery.

Examples? Probably wouldn’t do the whole cat thing with a dog I didn’t know. Or I remember not letting Joey jump off the kitchen counter. Or when vehicles or other life threatening things are around. But jumping off the monkey bars? Sure. Crawling through the mud? Absolutely. Running down the steep hill? Most likely.

It’s also important to remember that with fostering bravery and independence also usually entails giant mess. 

Teaching our children how to feed themselves, for example, is so messy I want to cry.

Allowing the baby to crawl through the puddle? Lord, I don’t really want that mess, but here we are. 

Asking Joey if we wanted to take his training wheels off? Ya, bloody knees ensued. With tears. And mess. But he was so proud of himself, it was worth every single bandaid to make it better.

But how could possibly letting my child run down the steep hill eventually foster empathy? 

Well, look at it this way. A child has literally not enough emotional intelligence to “feel someone’s feelings”, aka, empathy, if they haven’t actually felt them. 

If Joey runs down the hill, one of two things will happen. He will fall, or he will make it. 

If he falls, he will be able to encourage another child to run down that hill, and be brave, because he already knows what it’s like to fall down at the bottom. And knows that it will be ok. And if and when his friend falls, Joey will be right there to tell them that he knows how they feel, and he will know how to help them. Empathy.

If Joey makes it down the hill, and doesn’t fall, he will also be able to encourage his friend to do the same, because he knows what it’s like to make it! He will have pride for his friend when they make it too, and if they fall, Joey will have empathy to encourage them to try again. 

This mitigates the fear of bravery. Because these things are scary! It’s scary to fall, it’s scary to try. But if we can teach our children how to overcome fear and foster not only bravery in themselves, but others too, we can encourage them to also form empathetic and self-sustaining relationships in the future. As children, and as adults.

A self aware child is one of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves, as well as our child.