When do you let them fall?

I never knew that someone can be reckless and tentative at the same time until I met my daughter.

She crawls now, awkwardly. She cruises on our furniture, though she will only pull up if she’s climbing on me. She progresses so cautiously, like she’s rock climbing. It’s like you can see her brain planning the next move -- I’ll lift my leg now, and then I will lift my hand and put it right there and so on and so on.

But sometimes she’s just crazy and I fear for her life.

When I am carrying her and she sees something she wants, she will try to leap out of my arms with no regard for her own safety. Or if she’s standing up, holding onto the couch, sometimes she just lets go. And lately, while I put her on the bed while I get dressed, she seems to think it’s a fun game to crawl to the edge of the bed and peer over. I can’t decide if she just assumes I will catch her, thus preventing the possibility of pain, or if she just doesn’t comprehend the potential consequences.

A session of baby play last week makes me think she views me as both her personal safety net and locomotion assistance machine. She was holding onto the coffee table and noticed one of the tv remotes. It’s small and silver, and she loves to put it in her mouth. She gets really excited about this remote. It’s a symbol of power in the house, I suppose, and she probably thinks it’s magic. Anyway, I decided to experiment by putting it out of her reach in such a way that she would have to maneuver around the corner of the coffee table to get it. I was spotting her, of course, just waiting for her to lose her balance as she tried to get to the remote. Instead, she noticed my hand, grabbed it, and let go of the table to get around the corner. Once she was clear, she let go of my hand, reconnected with the coffee table and lunged for the remote.

She got it. And just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I set up the experiment again. Same results.

It’s an odd position to be in. Sometimes, I feel like she won’t ever try anything new unless I push her. But how does she learn consequences? I can’t just let her fall -- not yet. She’s not coordinated enough to keep from hurting herself. But how will she ever learn to do things on her own?

Part of me is happy that my daughter feels so secure that she just assumes I’ll always be there. It makes me feel necessary in a way I’ve never felt before. But how do you teach your kids resilience? How do they learn to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and try again?

When do you let them fall? How often do you let them fail? Is it too early to even worry about this?

Those who read this blog and others who know me might say I have been known to worry a little too much.

I obsess over my daughter’s naps, her development, her weight (she’s on the skinny side for a baby), her health (she has her first ear infection right now), her lack of teeth and hair, and just about anything else you could possibly worry about when it comes to a perfectly healthy, happy child. During Spring Break, for example, we were staying at my wife’s parents’ house. Eleanor was sleeping peacefully in a crib in a different room than our own. But before I could go to sleep, I just had to go in her room and check to make sure she was breathing. Seriously? I hadn’t done that since she was about three months old. I thought I was past that level of ridiculous, irrational fear!

Well, as I figure this out, I’ll keep spotting my daughter in her quest for independence. For now, I’ll catch her as many times as she needs me, but I’ll try not to get in her way. Maybe she’ll tell me when she’s ready.

P.S. I wrote the first draft of this post on Thursday of last week. In the intervening days, she has learned to go around corners by herself and pull up on some low level furniture. She even crawls up and down the two stairsteps in our house, and she has started to walk a little bit only holding one of my hands. I am in awe of her new skills, and I am having a hard time processing the speed of change. Now, if she could progress like this and still take her normal naps (absent the last three days), that would be great :)