A Monkey Bars Moment at the Park

After school yesterday, I took the kids to the park to play for a bit and get all their energy out before dinner. They’d been asking to go for a while now and it seemed like the perfect thing to do on a rather warm fall evening.

Anna has been talking a lot lately how she can do the monkey bars at the playground and wanted to show us so badly. The whole walk there, she kept asking if she could do them for me, which of course I was excited to see.

When we got there, she climbed up on the ladder and extended her arm and grabbed on to one of the bars. She was high off the ground and I felt a little…scared. Getting antsy, I asked if she needed my help, and she said no. For a second I didn’t think her little arms would be able to hold her body up, let alone move from bar to bar, but to my complete and utter surprise, she did it! I was so proud, and she had the biggest smile on her face the entire time.

She maneuvered across three bars before coming to a standstill, and she just dangled in the air, fingers slipping and unable to go any further. I started getting nervous and quickly came to stand under her, ready to catch her if she fell. I asked her if she wanted me to hold her so she didn’t fall, and she said, “No, I’m fine.”

I then asked if she wanted me to help her back to the platform so she could start over. Again, she said no, she “had this and could do it all by myself". So she let go and fell to the ground, laughing as she landed first on her feet, then on her bottom. Anna then got up and did it all over again, and every time I would ask her if I could jump in and help her do it, she denied my request and did it all on her own.

There was a time she wouldn’t have even dared to climb the monkey bars, but now she is proving to me, right in front of my eyes, that she can do anything she sets her mind to, even when I am practically begging her to let me help, even when I wanted nothing more then to come in a swoop her up and hold on to her so she wouldn’t fall.

And it was right then in that minute that I realized, there will be so many monkey bar moments in life with them; so many times that we will have to fight the urge to wrap our arms around them so no harm will come and they won’t get hurt by the outside world. As they get older and they become more and more exposed to everything around them, the possibilities of their fingers slipping seem endless, and we won’t always be there to catch them when they fall. What then? We let them fall and get back up all by themselves.

I suppose every parent feels this way when their children are little. I can’t even imagine the ride it’s going to be when they’re older and in real danger. But for now, I a relishing in this little monkey bar moment and how proud of our girl I am.