Monday, January 12, 2009

Conquering Fear

On Saturday, Meghan attended a party at Pump It Up for the first time ever. For those of you not familiar, remember the giant bouncy houses that you might find at a fair or in someone's backyard? Well picture a lot more of them, on steroids.

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We were one of the first ones there and Meghan was kind of clingy which is usually not like her. And the we walked into the first bouncy area. She was OVERWHELMED. She stood next to me for a few minutes not sure what to do. The she saw the slide and decided that was the best place to start.

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Okay, so far, so good. She tried another one. And seemed to be having a blast.

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Then she went back to the slide and here is where we ran into a problem.

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She just sat there and refused to slide down. I was at the bottom trying to coax her down. No luck. Other parents tried to encourage her. Nope. Someone who works there had to go help her slide down.

And what did she want to do next? That's right, the slide again. And what did she do this time? You guessed it, she froze. We went through the same routine before she finally came sliding down...and wanted to go again. Personally, I had enough of this but the other parents were encouraging her to go again. So up again she went. Just to sit at the top of the slide and refuse to come down. Other kids just started to go around her to slide down.

Thankfully, it was time to move on to the other arena. Unfortunately, this one also had a slide. And this slide was positioned in such a way that I could not see if she was just sitting up there, frozen with fear. Eventually I would see her at the bottom of the slide and she would run right around to do it again. She kept trying over and over again until she no longer hesitated at the top.

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She was invited to another party there in a few weeks. I wonder if she will remember that there is nothing to be afraid of.

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