Small is now six years old, apparently the age at which after-school activities become the plague of family life. I’m joking, I know these opportunities are great for children. And I want to be excited that he can try different sports, join the Scouts or learn an instrument. But to be honest, I am less than enthusiastic.
I’m sure that’s an emotion all parents experience to some degree – I now have a new appreciation for all those hours my parents spent driving me to piano lessons (which I obviously really valued at the time…) But as a parent with a slightly wonky health record, I can feel fearful about taking on mid- or long-term commitments.
The reality of living with rheumatoid arthritis is that I have stretches of time when I feel good and normal life doesn’t feel like hard work. But when ‘flares’ do come, they make life hard and I only want to do the bare minimum. Memories of those times make decision-making tricky – the thought of adding in extra obligations isn’t appealing. Fear can trick my mind into closing off and shutting down new ideas and opportunities.
I know I have a choice in whether I listen to that fear. Here’s a fact: Small has been having swimming lessons for a year and we have only had to miss one single lesson because I wasn’t well. Just one. Most of the time, we have pushed through and gone, and I have survived. So I can choose to look at that experience and be encouraged – we can do this!
We’re not going to be rushing off to activities every day of the week. That wouldn’t be good for me, and I don’t believe it would be great for the kids either. But I really don’t want my fear to be the thing that makes the decisions for us.
Small is not the keenest bean to try new things at the moment, but I know he would love some of these activities if he gave them a go. So I need to encourage him to try new things, rather than accepting his first response (which will inevitably be, “I’d rather play Lego”) just because it fits my agenda.
The Chronic Parent 