Fence-climbing 101

A few days after beginning grade 1, the social anxiety of said grade reared its ugly head. Brookie was playing with two other little friends. Now we all know what a group of three feels like anyway, and in this case especially because Brookie is younger than both of these other girls, so it wasn't surprising to me that at a certain point, Brookie ended up in tears at the back door. After giving her time to just sit with me and cry, I asked her what was wrong. "I am the only one who can't climb the fence and I hate being left behind," Brookie explained between sobs. It is always so heart-breaking to see your child struggle with anything but the struggle to fit in is particularly painful. I offered a fairly painless solution. What if we had a fence-climbing lesson with Daddy and Rosie after dinner?

And that is exactly what we did. After we ate that night, we headed out to the back yard fence and began practising the fine art of fence climbing. Brookie was determined. It took her only a couple of tries before she was scaling our fence without any help. Rosie "learned" too, although I think she had a good handle on it already. And by bedtime that night, the crisis had been adverted.

The next day after school, I heard Brookie ask through the fence if she could play next door. Then she climbed over the fence all on her own and ran off around the corner. I couldn't help remembering the first time Brookie had crawled away from me when she was just a wee thing and had disappeared around the couch. It was the same feeling I had in my throat; a tightening and a sadness at the inevitablity of our children leaving us behind mixed with a quiet pride in knowing Brookie had done it. No fence would ever hold her back again.
~Mandy