Muscles wanted a new bike and he found one online for half off. Half of a bike that is.
That’s his joke, not mine. He is a funny kid. He likes to have fun. He likes to entertain people. I used to tease him when he was little that he was going to grow up to be a clown. I thought I was teasing. At the risk of sounding like the flawed mother that I am I will tell you the truth. I think I was worried that he would grow up to be a clown so I have almost unknowingly discouraged him from developing his fun loving self and tried to steer him in other directions. I don’t think I have said or done anything outright but in subtle ways I have been holding him back. Just like I have been holding back all my children and everyone around me with my lack of vision and my negativity.
A couple weeks ago I read a story in You’ve got To Read This Book! about a boy, Farrah Gray, that started his first business of painting and selling rocks door to door when he was 6. When he was 8 someone told him what a Think Tank was so he booked a conference room in a local hotel and invited various business men to come speak to him and a dozen friends about business. He started having his friends run several different businesses while he raised $15,000 to fund their ventures.
By the time he was 11 he was running his venture capitol business and was a co-host on a nationally syndicated television talk show but he said he felt frustrated with where he was in life. At 11! He wondered why he never felt happy and calm. That’s when he found a book called The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra. In it he learned about the Law of Least Effort. He learned that success is not about hard work. Don’t you know plenty of people who work hard their whole lives but never get ahead? Farrah’s mother was one of those people. Success is about finding your true purpose and excellence in life.
So Farrah thought of something he liked to do, he was good at and would help people. He came up with Farrout Foods, a food company for kids that made a million dollars. When he was 14 he sold the company for $1.5 million and went on to do many other amazing things.
I thought of Muscles and the first thing that came to my mind was the unicycle he asked for several months ago. He met another boy who had one and was smitten. He had the money to buy his own but I said no. He already has a bike, a Ripstick, a scooter, and roller blades. We don’t need any more wheels at this house. Not even one! But after reading Farrah’s story it became painfully clear that I had to change my attitude. I have to let my kids do what they need to do (when I’m prompted that it’s the right thing to do of course) and stop holding them back so I told Muscles that I wanted him to buy a unicycle. He excitedly looked online and found a used one for a great price and we drove to the city last week to pick it up.
He has been watching unicycle videos online and practicing like crazy. After only two days he can get on it without holding on to anything and he can go more than 50 feet without falling down. It’s so fun watching him! As soon as he gets really good at it he’s going to take his show on the road and when he gets tired of that he’s going to open his own restaurant where the waiters serve food on unicycles. He didn’t say a word about clown costumes… not that there would be anything wrong with that…
Muscles just asked me to read a story that he found in a book I brought home from the thrift store, In Your Dreams published by Nelson Thomson Learning. It says…
Eighteen-year-old Jesse Martin left Melbourne, Australia, on December 7, 1998, and sailed 30,000 miles around the world. He arrived back in Melbourne on October 31, 1999. He became the youngest person to sail nonstop, solo, and unassisted around the world.
Jesse says, “I have discovered that we mustn’t limit other people’s abilities by our own. We need to encourage and help those around us, particularly our youth, with whatever their dreams may be, and then we’ll start to see great things happen. I was just a normal kid with a dream, who was serious about what I wanted to do.”
Now that’s what I’m talking about. From now on I’m going to do my best to encourage my children and keep out of their way.