what are we holding back?

Then we entered the stadium proper, and the amazement in his eyes made me consider just how much larger this place was than any other he’d seen. Seats swept in both directions so far they grayed with haze. In the tens of thousands, people shifted, churned, the moving sea of a landscape.

“All my life you knew this was happening,” his expression accused, his gaze struggling to take it all in, “and you never showed me?”

Two years one month old had seemed a strapping age for our son’s first baseball game — to us. To him it felt like betrayal. This is the boy who chokes on the bacon he shovels too quickly into his mouth. How dare we hold anything back?

I wonder what other experiences we’ve sheltered him from inadvertently. We try: no TV, regular excursions, playdates with other kids. But what have we missed that we don’t even realize? Parents almost need a checklist of experiences their children should be exposed to within the first two or three years.

Certainly, as a first-time parent of a boy only two years old, I’m no authority. But below is a first stab at creating an experience checklist.

true obedience

Jesus and Peter walked on water. The Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. Neil Armstrong planted his bootprints on the moon.

Next to those, the most astounding footsteps I know were just three or four in number, and they took place in my mother’s kitchen.

My son — compulsive, train-obsessed two-year-old boy — was crouched over the toy train track Grannie had set for him in a spare nook of kitchen floor. It was time to go. Knowing his propensity for emotional explosion, I’d issued a five-minute warning, then a two-minute warning … not that he had any such grasp of time, only to ready him for imminent disappointment.

Time was finally up. “Okay now, let’s go,” I said. “Come put on your shoes.”  Expecting the customary collapse and outburst, I was shifting position to lift him off the floor.