What Are You Afraid of?
My Junior High class read a short story this week called “The Elevator.” It’s about a 12-year-old boy who is afraid to ride the elevator in his apartment building. The students liked the story because it’s a little creepy (in keeping with the theme of October) and it’s a cliffhanger so they were able to write their own endings.
One of the things about the story they weren’t very happy with, however, was the father’s reaction to the boy’s fear. He kept calling him a “coward” all the while urging him to “grow up.” He tells the boy “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” I have been thinking about that part ever since we read the story. I’ve been thinking about what a dumb thing it is to tell others “there’s nothing to be afraid of.” We are all afraid of something; we just try not to admit it. And if we were being honest, there’s a lot in the world and in our lives to be a little afraid of.
As for me, I’m afraid of snakes, the war in the Middle East, and that something bad will happen to my sons or my grandsons. (Truthfully, the list is a little longer than that, but we don’t need to add to the point.) The point is that we all have a list – including our children. Maybe especially our children. The thing is, we don’t always know what makes them afraid. Children don’t always tell us because they somehow think they shouldn’t be afraid.
And where do you think they get that idea? They get it from us. What we say and how we say it and what we do makes a big difference in how our children navigate their fears. There are times in my classroom when the students will bring up their own fears and I’m always careful in how I respond. It does no good to say “don’t be afraid.” It does, however, help to acknowledge the fear and its cause. Just having someone else accept their fears with respect seems to help.
I also think that part of parenting – and teaching sometimes – requires us to not only accept, but to think up ways to mitigate the fear. Recently, my older students have become fearful that the Middle East war could turn into something bigger, so we talk about that in class and we talk about how that probably won’t happen (notice the probably – that’s important) but if it did, how we could manage. It’s not helpful to just tell our children something they fear won’t hurt them. We need to help them work through the what if’s. We need to ride the elevator with them – as many times as it takes for them to feel powerful enough to ride it themselves. And that becomes a whole lot easier if we remember that, like our children, we have fears, too.
What are you afraid of?
