Be as Brave as Your Kid

One night, while driving home from youth group, my oldest daughter came up with an idea.

“Dad, tomorrow, I’m going to ask my English teacher if I can use her coffee pod machine.”

As teens are known to do, L.E. has developed a taste for coffee. Apparently, getting up at 5:45 AM for middle school takes its toll on even the kids.

What she said next caught me off guard.

“It’s a definite ‘no’ if I don’t try.”

What a perfect way to look at the things we’re afraid to attempt. She knows that if she never asks, the answer is no. If she never tries, the answer is no.

Why does she believe that? Because kids are braver than adults.

Think about all the new things we ask them to do.

We pull up to a soccer field with 30 kids milling around. We drop our son off and tell him to go make some friends on his new team. He walks across the field and does something we adults never do.

When is the last time you started something brand new and had to introduce yourself to 30 people you’d never met before? I don’t do that regularly and you probably don’t either.

Or what about school? Every year, our kids get a completely new set of teachers, classes, and experiences.

That would be like changing jobs every year with a completely new set of bosses, tasks, and expectations.

We’d find that difficult, to say the least, but that’s exactly what kids do every single year.

We might take these things for granted. Even as we hate giving speeches in front of people and encourage our kids to do the spelling bee, it’s easy to forget how brave kids are.

The next time you’ve got a challenge, I dare you to look at it differently.

I dare you to be as brave as your kid.