One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. — Maya Angelou
Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave. — Mary Tyler Moore
At a time when many of us, of all political persuasions, are feeling stressed in a variety of ways, we look for strength from outside of us and from within. We want to talk with you about how to find that fortitude within yourselves and to help your children find it as well. Life often entails courage.
Is there a difference between bravery and courage? They are related and often used interchangeably. The words refer to strength facing danger or difficulty. Sometimes a distinction is made in which bravery suggests the absence of fear and courage suggests acting even with fear. Either way, we think a healthy amount of both is what life often requires of us. Neither refer to being reckless or disregarding danger.
Your child’s most important model of behavior is you. You may have had one of those common parenting moments when your child repeated some untoward thing you have said –at sometimes the least opportune, most cringe-worthy moment. And sometimes you weren’t even aware they took it in. As parents, we get to hear ourselves played back to us—and it can be rewarding or unsettling. So, yes, your child is watching, listening, trying to learn how to act—or later, in their teen years, perhaps what to reject.
Helping your child become courageous starts with you. What strengthens you? For many, it may be something that offers release or relaxation, support or validation, or self-understanding. We would include things like physical activity—the gym, a run, a walk outside, some basketball—or yoga, meditation, listening (or dancing) to music, journaling, or reaching out to a friend, family member, or a religious figure. Some people take inspiration from hearing or reading about how other people have handled challenges they faced. Think back to times in your life that you think you faced with courage. Consider what helped you act courageously then. What matters is that you explore and discover what your sources of steadiness are. Your child, seeing you engage in these, will see you as strong and self-determining and will learn about ways to find their own strength facing hard times.
We believe that courage includes hope and belief in oneself—the ability to see a stressful situation clearly, understand the challenges and risks, feel capable, and foresee a potential triumph. And importantly, it takes the ability to be willing to fail and get back up again. As has been said, “The measure of a person is not how many times they fall, but how many times they get back up.”
What would that look like for your child?
Marcus, a fifth grader, had never learned to ride a 2-wheel bicycle. He had always said “No!” when offered the chance. His friends all could and were beginning to tease him about not being able to. His mom, hearing the teasing and responding to his feeling ashamed, asked him about taking his older brother’s bike out with her to give it a try. But first, she told him how she had not learned to swim until she was in her mid-20s. It had always scared her even though she wanted to do it and she had managed to avoid it whenever given the chance. For her, the tipping point came when she was with all of her friends at the beach on a steamy, hot, humid day. Eventually, her wish to cool off outweighed her fear. But she told her friends honestly about how afraid she was and they helped her to go in step by step until she dunked her head and came back up. They were right there to catch her if she had difficulty. That was the beginning of what led to swim lessons and, as Marcus had seen, her love of any kind of swimming. Understanding that even his mom had been afraid of something that he himself could do and that she would stay by his side letting him do it more and more on his own, little by little, Marcus was game to try. He still felt afraid —this is where courage came in—but he did it. He wobbled and even fell over a few times but by the end of a few hours he had mostly gotten the hang of it.
And he was incredibly proud of himself for learning to ride the bike but more importantly for doing it even though he felt afraid. He felt courageous. Many children feel that way after facing something that scares them. Children also take great heed to stories about when their parents were challenged and then tried to meet that with courage.
This is an everyday kind of example of a parenting moment in which you can encourage your child to face the things they are afraid of but that you think they can or should do and will be glad they did. These everyday moments build within your child an inner sense of strength that will steady them when they face some of life’s more significant and inevitable ups and downs—whether in their work life, personal life, or in the world around them. They will have gotten from you the gift of being able to step up and step forward into difficult things.
