The Hampster and the Monkey

My kids have very different personalities. My son is usually more timid at first and has high hopes of doing lots of brave and adventurous things. He is often slow to start out, but once his confidence builds, he wants to show everyone what he can do and teach others how to do it.

My daughter, on the other hand, sees no danger and knows no fear, so she dives in to something with both feet and then when she gets hurts is totally stunned that this happened.

This last week was a perfect example of this. The place we stayed had a hampster-wheel on the playground. The boy decided he was going to play on that all day. Once we actually got to it and he saw how unstable it was, he decided he was only going to crawl on hands and knees. Over a period of several days and numerous attempts, he slowly built his confidence to the point that he was running on it by day 5, just in time for us to go home.

The girl first eyed the ‘web’ on the playground. She immediately ran to it and climbed right up to the top and even began climbing over the top bar and trying to descend down the other side. No fear in that one. After nearly losing her grip and falling a few times she learned to be a bit more cautious. All of this she was doing while still nursing two badly skinned knees and one skinned elbow from a fall at church last weekend (while excitedly running full-steam) to see a friend who had returned from abroad). Thankfully, no major falls or injuries this week for her.