Barn Parenting In The Age Of Intervention & Bubble Wrap

We’ve all seen the memes. The ones about how we grew up with skinned knees & elbows, going reluctantly home when the street lights came on. We talk about how we rode our bikes & big wheels without helmets & how we survived. Not just that: we were better for it. We thrived & we love to talk about all of that like we were given some sort of super hero award for childhood bad assery. But when it comes to our most precious little parasites, our lovely little muffins: we balk. Not just that- we buffer, we intervene & we wrap our kids in a proverbial bubble wrap.

Is this really a bad thing? After all, does a kid have to fall & get skinned knees & elbows to succeed in life? Nope, not at all. But they do have to learn get back up when life knocks them into the dirt & they can’t learn that all important life lesson without first, well, without first hitting aforementioned dirt. Sometimes a lot.

One of the many, many things I love about horses is that they teach us perseverance. I use that word a lot because it’s so lacking these days.  It can be hard to watch my daughter struggle to learn a new movement or ride a difficult school horse but the more I stay out of it, the more her experience becomes about her. About her staying tough in the face of adversity, of pushing herself past her comfort zones & to the other side of her fears & about her learning that with hard work there can be a true sense of pride; not conceit, but pride in a job well done… even if it’s not always pretty getting there.

When you have the right partners in your trainers, you can trust that your child will be taking on appropriate new challenges, even when they fail miserably & frustratingly in the beginning.  They may even fall off & it could end in injury. Trust me I know, it’s pretty horrifying & my heart is in my throat every time my daughter & her horse part company & I hold my breath until she gets up & dusts herself off. As horrifying as it can be, it’s so important that she learns to get back on whenever she can. Most often, there will probably even be other barn moms there to hold your hand & coach you through it with as much grace (& maybe a glass of wine later) as possible. Now that should come with a superhero award for bad-assery.

Here’s the thing- no 5 year old child ever said that everyone should get a ribbon. That came from parents. Not bad parents, just ones who wanted to buffer, intervene & wrap their kids in proverbial bubble wrap. At the end of the day, their children lost out on some super important lessons: that winning is not a goal but a symptom of working hard, that pride comes from perseverance & that we as their parents are behind them to dust them off (or drive them to the ER) when they do hit the dirt.