Facing your fears

At work I often talk about change with teachers, trying something new, learning in new ways and to quote Eleanor Roosevelt-"Do something each day that scares you". They quote it back to me often. Now, I don't think being scared every day is a good thing but I do try to model to my kids that facing fears can be done. When Carey wrote about surfing and sharks I laughed and made reference to Shark Week. Most of you like me grew up with JAWS and since then my fear of deep water or any water in general is always there. My small fry has never had that fear-he snorkeled like crazy 3 years ago and was excited to do it all again. UNTIL he A) Remembered shark week and B) Hubby saw a big fish with some kind of fin sticking up our first morning and jockingly said shark. Well this was all it took. The first time we went to snorkel, small fry made it about 2 feet into deep water and turned back and refused to go out. This posed a problem as we had just reserved an ALL day snorkeling trip out in deeper waters. He adamantly said "I am not going, no way". We cajoled, convinced him the turtles would be there and reassured etc, he wasn't budging. I finally told him that deep water scared the heck out of me and that he was the one who 3 years ago got me out of the boat. That we would never do something we thought wasn't safe. The whole way in the shuttle he was saying, "Well I'll think about it". We get to the lagoon, he sees the first beautiful blue fish from above and says "I'll do it, I'm scared but I am going to go for it-mom will you hold my hand" You betcha buddy-Will you hold mine?

A little risk is a good thing, you can't enjoy the ride if you don't get the heck on!