As adults, we completely believe we are smarter than kids. We make comments like, “When you are older you’ll understand” or “Wisdom comes with age.” I have said these very things to my kids. In some aspects this may be true. We see danger they don’t see and we’ve made mistakes that we had to learn from. However, there is a knowledge that kids have and with time lose as they make their way into the land of “adulthood”.
Yesterday I was “schooled” as my daughter calls it by my twelve year old son. He was talking about how he was going to play football at the University of Alabama one day. Before I tell you the rest of this story let me give you a little visual here. My son is not a big kid. He loves football more than air. He wears his bruises and bumps with pride during football season. He is very unaware that he is one of the smallest boys on the field. This has given me heart failure more than once when I’ve watched him helplessly from the stands while he gets in a big ‘ol boy’s face and smack talks. Anyway, I replied, “You know son to play football at Bama you have to be really big….” I realized I was shooting down his dream and I felt awful but as his Mom I didn’t want to lie to him.
He was quiet for a moment then looked at me and said, “When did you stop believing that if you wanted something bad enough you could make it happen?” I had absolutely no reply for this. When I didn’t respond he said, “It’s all about determination Mom not the size of the player.”
Kids believe in themselves. We call it fairy tales, they call it possibilities. We say that you live and learn but maybe you just live, get bitter by disappointment and stop dreaming. There is a knowledge in our kids that we as adults let the world kill by the time they reach adulthood. Why are so many adults attracted to YA fiction? Because the dream’s still there. The belief anything is possible lies within those pages of fantasy. It is something we as adults crave because we lost that knowledge so long ago. Sure, maybe we won’t marry a vampire or find out we are part fairy but it reminds us that if we fight for our dreams anything is possible.
