It's Okay to Fall Down

My 4 year-old daughter Sophia is taking group ice skating lessons at the local municipal rink, and her enthusiasm for learning how to skate went from 60 to zero once she had to step on the ice for the first time. After being escorted by hand to her "lane" to join her other "Tot 1" (pre-K kids who haven't skated a lick in their lives) lesson-mates, she had the look of a deer in headlights.

The lesson started with walking small steps forward and keeping balance with both arms out and to the front. All the kids swayed like drunken frat boys on a Friday night and most fell, including Sophia. Sophia struggled to get back on her skates and with great trepidation tried to scuffle forward again... and fell again. She tried to get back on her feet and I could tell she was beginning to cry. This being the first day, that scene was played over all over the rink and in a handful of cases, I saw some parents walking to the entrance and collecting their kids from teaching assistants as they sobbed.

As Sophia stood still like a statue on the ice with tears streaming down her face, I debated whether I should walk down to ice level to encourage her to press on. Could I comfort her and send her back? Unlikely, because once she got off the rink, you'd need the jaws of life to pry her from me to get back on the ice. Making a hard split second decision, I decided not to make eye contact with Sophia walk down to the rink to collect her. I knew that once she saw me moving towards the rink, she'd point at me and continue to wail and she'd insist upon the teachers bringing her to me - she wanted to go home.

So I did something that was really hard for me. I watched her from a distance. I watched her cry. I watched her struggle with fear as the skating instructors tried to gently coax her to take some more steps forward. And perhaps recognizing that daddy wasn't going to pull her out of the class and take her home, eventually my daughter slowly began to try again, even as she was crying. She shuffled her feet and resumed the activity, slower than the other kids, but she eventually made it across to the other side.

At the end of her lesson, I gave her a hug and told her that she did a really excellent job for her first lesson. I told her that I was proud of her for being a brave girl and that even in the span of the 30 minute lesson, I saw her get better. And then we had this exchange:

Me: Honey, why were you so sad?

Sophia: I fell down.

Me: Were you hurt?

Sophia: No. I was sad because I fell down.

Me: Honey, it's okay to fall down.

Then I had "the talk" with her about not being afraid of "failing", and that there was something really good about working through something that was difficult and eventually getting better at. I probably went into full cliché mode and rattled off some things plagiarized from John Wooden or Knute Rockne, but hopefully she got my point.

I realize that what's much more important than my words to her (and my other children) are my actions and how I love and care for them when they "fail". If I really want my children to understand the essence of grace (from God, their parents, and their self) when they stumble, I think it's about communicating more than simply "You'll do it right next time", which can be interpreted as "You failed and I expect you to succeed soon." Hopefully what I'm communicating is that there's redemption in failing as a learning experience, and yes, learning from failure is something that can help us succeed later on. But above all, I never want her to feel that falling down makes me disappointed in her, makes me think less of her or makes me love her any less.

I'm proud of my daughter that she got up and kept trying. And maybe the perfect love and grace from a perfect God and Father (which I can only strive to imitate) gives us the freedom to fall down (and not get 'delivered' from our trial and suffering right away), dust ourselves up and get up, too.