I want my kids to be healthy not safe

It scares me every time I hand our daughter Penny a sharp knife. Penny is 17, and she’s fairly competent in the kitchen. She also has Down syndrome. Her hands are small. Her fine motor skills aren’t the same as her typically-developing peers. But she wants to learn how to cook for herself. She has helped cut vegetables plenty of times without cutting herself. Still, I envision blood and tears every time she slices red peppers in preparation for dinner.

I could pretend that the fear I feel when Penny uses a knife is simply a product of her disability. But I feel something similar when her siblings enter situations where they might get hurt. I felt the desire to hover, to take over, to instruct them with incredible precision. I felt it when Marilee showed up at summer camp and we discovered that she would be sleeping on the top bunk of a tiny canvas tent and it was going to rain for days on end. I felt it when William was taking geometry and didn’t feel prepared for his exam. I want to rush in and take away all their discomfort. I want to keep them safe.   

On the one hand, all the parenting literature I read tells me to help our kids develop intrinsic motivation. I’m supposed to cultivate a desire to accomplish a task because they are interested in it inherently. And I’m advised to equip them with an internal locus of control, an ability to recognize and exercise their own agency and responsibility in age-appropriate ways, whether that be with the task of tying their shoes or packing up school lunches or emailing a teacher when they know they will be late with an assignment. I’m also encouraged to let them experience the consequences of oversleeping their alarm or watching YouTube instead of studying for a quiz or leaving the candy wrappers next to the couch.

I’ve bemoaned the problems of helicopter and snowplow parents who hover around their children, making sure that a smooth path awaits. And yet, somehow, I’m very tempted to become one of those parents. Because as much as we are advised to give our kids agency, we are also offered the imperative to make sure our kids are safe. Safe from predators. Safe from triggering ideas. Safe from bullies. Safe from emotional abuse. Safe from fire and injury and illness and gossip and depression and anxiety and substance abuse. 

I want to keep our kids safe from danger and harm. But for me, that desire has translated into a whole lot of strategies for keeping them safe from experiencing any sort of discomfort. In wanting to keep them safe, I wonder if I have prevented them from taking healthy risks, developing healthy ambition and experiencing healthy stress. I think about the way I develop strength, flexibility and endurance in my body. It is only by placing my muscles under a healthy amount of stress. I need to give our kids the freedom to do the same, with their bodies, their minds and their spirits. 

Which brings me back to Penny wielding a knife in the kitchen. I took an online course that offers insights to parents whose young adult children with disabilities are approaching the age 18. This course introduced me to the concept of the “dignity of risk.” It’s not just that Penny will learn something by slicing peppers, even, perhaps, that she might learn from the pain that comes if she doesn’t pay attention to where her fingers are placed on the cutting board. It’s also that she deserves the respect—from herself and others—that comes from making mistakes and enduring hardship and overcoming adversity and being able to contribute to the family’s dinner. 

Our other kids deserve that same respect. So I am turning my attention as a mom away from keeping them safe. That’s already my default mode, as well as the default of the schools and other parents around me. I am not turning towards danger, but rather towards health.