Parenting Adventurous Kids Is An Adventure

I love how different my kids are. They both have qualities about them that I adore and they both have qualities that drive me nuts. I love that I get to watch these two completely different humans grow up.

When my son was younger he had a lot of fears and phobias. I take responsibility for them. I was a nervous mom, and I made him a nervous kid. 

He has since outgrown them and has a great sense of adventure. I grin and bear it when he’s being daring because the smile on his face is worth it.

My daughter has been adventurous from the start. She is only hesitant when she is completely unfamiliar with something.

She once begged me to take her to the roller rink. She had never skated and was so excited, until she rolled onto the floor and fell.  She was done.

She likes to know how to do things, and she likes to do them well.  We sat on the sidelines and watched. I tried showing her how her brother was falling and getting up and having a blast. It was a hard sell.

I gave up and returned my skates. After a few more minutes, she looked at me and said, “I want to skate.” Ten minutes later she was off, skating and having a blast.

Knowing this about my kids will help you understand this story. We recently left our Grafton home and went to Maine for the weekend. We decided to take a cruise on the ocean. 

It was supposed to be a nice hour and a half away from the campsite, and a relaxing time for our family. We had been on it once before more than 10 years ago and had a great time. 

My daughter was not convinced that this was a good idea. She had never done something like this and we understood her anxiety, but we assured her that this was going to be so much fun. 

We got there and ended up being first in line, so we happily took the front seats on the boat. As we cruised through the cove on the way to the ocean, we were all smiles. Five minutes later we were crashing into swells and getting soaked. 

I was sitting with my son and had a kung-fu death grip on his shorts. I felt him leave the seat twice and thought, “What have we done?” 

Over on the other bench, my daughter was screaming and crying. My husband did his best to comfort her, but looking ahead, this wasn’t something that was going to ease up in a few minutes. We were going to be doing this for the next hour and a half. 

After getting splashed and tossed about for 20 minutes, I decided to move into the cabin with my daughter. It wasn’t much better in there, but at least we weren’t getting wet. 

I’d love to tell you that I was the picture of strength, that I was able to comfort her, but I was a wreck. I couldn’t see the front of the boat and even though I was confident that my husband would keep my son safe, it was completely out of my control. 

Luckily there were some fellow passengers who agreed with me that this was an awful experience and we bonded a little over our misery. My daughter actually fell asleep on the ride back and I was able to call my husband’s cell phone and hear that they were all right. Soaked and a little nauseous, but all right. 

When we finally docked, my daughter kept reminding us how she didn’t want to go on the boat and how we told her it was going to be fine. We completely agreed, but told her that we made it, we were all OK, and we would never forget this adventure we had just had. 

The smile on my son’s face assured me that we were right.