I am finding that it is so good to carefully place your kids in situations where something difficult is asked of them.

(Certainly life does does that for all of us in giant ways – death of grandparents and loved ones, death of family pets, divorce, moving, friendships failing, broken relationships, change of plans, disappointments and more.)

But I’m talking about smaller ways.

Almost in preparation – it’s like we have an opportunity to provide a dress rehearsal of sorts.

When the kids and I visited the corn maze last month we were kind of lost.

Not hopelessly lost and not really dangerously lost as you could always call it quits and walk to the edge of the cornfield and exit through the wrong path — but we felt lost.  As in – we felt for real lost.

And we were all together and we kept circling the same map and we knew we were on the wrong path but we just couldn’t seem to find the right path.  Corn stalks all look so alike and every turn seemed to take us back in some sort of circular formation.

I watched some genuine kindness occur in that feeling-lost time.  A generous offer from Mosely to the Fox, “Want a piggy back ride?  I’ll carry you for a bit.”  This to a forty-plus pound long-legged kid on a day when the sun had surprised us all with its glowing warmth and we actually found ourselves sweating among the corn stalks.

Words of encouragement and camaraderie were shuffled back and forth between kids.  Jokes and high fives and pats of encouragement were offered.

I was reminded – you don’t develop these coping skills sitting in comfortable living rooms playing video games.

There was another opportunity at home.

In a mission to combat the ever growing pile of clothing the children of this home wear (and it’s not as if they own that many clothes– the clothes all just keep getting larger!) and the fact that this one hundred plus year old home has zero closets upstairs and the fact that Ryder has permanently moved into our laundry room which at one time served as our family closet we decided to move all of the clothes into the attic and create a family closet of sorts up there.

It was a big task and it involved moving lots of make shift shelves and bookcases turned clothing storage things upstairs.

There was this one shelf that was presenting a problem.  Although it was not exceptionally heavy it was rather awkward and more importantly, it had been placed in a tight wedge of a location that would take some clever manipulation and careful handling to remove it and to get it up the stairs.  I was going to conquer it myself but then an idea occurred to me.  I showed the kids the shelf.  I explained the problems with relocating it.  And then I said – “So – I’d like to see that shelf upstairs and I am going to leave the room and complete another task.  Good luck guys.”  And then I left the room.

It was like a little parenting miracle.

I didn’t hear grumbling and a quick leader emerged and some back and forth conversation and idea tossing happened.

There were weird noises and laughs and grunts and sharply uttered directives and then cheers of success.  Later the shelf found its home upstairs and the kids beamed with pride when they called me in to view their progress.

I beamed too.

It was a hard task and it was a challenge and they worked together to accomplish the goal.

Which was the point.

Our days are filled with opportunities to allow our kids to prove themselves in mostly safe but slightly stretching ways.

This weekend for Piper it looked like baking a recipe completely on her own.

She has long seen herself as a non-reader and is prone to quit without trying.  Words on her lips are “I can’t read.  I can’t do it.”  Even though she is reading, she thinks she does not read as easily as her siblings so she considers it not reading at all.

“Mommy – can I make a made up recipe?” she asked.

It’s her way of cooking without having to do the hard work of reading the recipe.

I’ve said yes to that question plenty of times before this but realized that maybe she needed a little coaxing to recognize her ability to read a recipe and to follow directions instead of winging it.

“You can make a recipe from this cookbook,” I said – handing her an old family favorite.

She hesitated, offered her same complaint of not being able to read, but finally gave in as the idea of accomplishing cookie baking solo overcame her fears of not being able to do it alone.

And you know what – we all enjoyed tasty molasses cookies that night because Piper waded through the hard and came out on the other side, a little independent baker.

I think we forget sometimes to let our kids do hard things.  To let them fail at doing hard things.  Or to let them succeed.  Both, you know.

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