Roller Skating on Thin Ice

My stomach sank. What the hell did I just do??

I anxiously realized that I had sent my defenseless 9 year old son to:
A small, dodgy city 30 minutes away from home...
To a party for a kid with a family I met once only in passing…
At a place I had never laid eyes on before…
To go roller skating, a slightly risky activity he had never done before…

And I didn’t even drive him myself to this potential death trap, I just sent him with his best friend’s dad who was going to drop the boys off with maybe a pat on the head and a murmur of good luck. I wasn't even thinking! 

Upon my arrival to pick them up, I found out that, miraculously:
He didn’t get dragged off by miscreants…
There were no broken bones…
He wasn’t sobbing in the corner for 2 hours…
The birthday boy’s family is perfectly lovely and personable…
My boy had so much fun learning to skate that he wanted to stay longer and show off his (hilariously awkward) moves.

Whew.

Then he told me later in the evening that he cried a little bit when he was walking into the building because he was nervous about the whole thing and there were creepy spider Halloween decorations that freaked him out.

Cue my stomach sinking all over again. I should have been there to help him! The negligence! That I wasn’t there with him through that harrowing experience! (Mom guilt is no joke.)

Until I realized that he did it; he went through that slightly uncomfortable experience without me and he was Fine. Not only was he Fine with a capital F but he had a blast!

I should have never doubted him. And more to the point, I shouldn’t have doubted myself.

I suppose things could have gone differently, perhaps horribly wrong, but the fact remains that they didn’t and everyone is better for it. Now I know that my instincts weren’t so far off the mark. My boy is ever proving he is capable of doing things that might have been a little scary at first and showing himself (and us) that he can do it scared and get past it. He can do things on his own without me there to hold his hand, literally and figuratively. And I made sure to point that out to him.

And this was just a simple roller skating birthday party for a 9 year old. It felt big at the time but let’s face it, it really wasn’t that big of a deal and he was never in any peril. There are lots more opportunities coming down the pike for him to show up for himself and for me to let him.

When you are doubting yourself in the ways that you show up for your kids or yourself, who will you ask for a reality check? When you are feeling too scared to do it scared, you need someone to have your back. Reach out to me to see if I can be that someone to guide you through the scary roller skating parties that life throws at you.