Muffins with Mom – How a teen faces his fear



A teen sending his Mama silly love.

I recently came across two meanings for the acronym F.E.A.R. One of the meanings said, Face Everything And Rise. The other meaning said, Forget Everything And Run. My college freshmen told me about an experience he had over Thanksgiving break. He applied one of these meanings without realizing that was what he was doing.

My son is attending school 600 miles from home, so he didn’t come home for Thanksgiving. Instead, he spent time with relatives who live a couple of hours from his college campus. One of the relatives he visited had a dog. I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but my son does NOT like dogs. I would go so far as to say, he is afraid of dogs.

After being in town a day, I asked my son whether he had a chance to visit many relatives. He said he had been to see a few people, but his most memorable visit was a trip to one of his aunt’s house. He told me about his visit through a text message.

My son said, “Well, I fell a total of 11 times at Aunt CheeChee’s house. I thought I was being chased by this dog by her house, so I ran and tripped like the people in the scary movies. I thought I was about to die, then I realized the dog was on a leash chained to a tree and just running in circles.”

The story continued in part two of my son’s text. “I fell down, then got up with leaves in my hair and my mouth. All I could do was shake my head in laughter.”

I was laughing so hard that I was shaking and couldn’t respond to his text right away. I did manage to ask my son, “Are you homesick yet?”

His response was short and quick, “Yeah.”

I live by the words, if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

Have you figured out which meaning of the acronym F.E.A.R. my son experienced? Actually he may have applied both meanings. When he saw that dog coming toward him, he didn’t wait to analyze whether he was on a chain. My son took flight and ran.

After dog incident was all over, my son was able to face the situation and rise above it. A part of his rising above this was to allow me to use his challenge as a blog post. And today is his birthday. Happy birthday, Grasshopper!

Has your child had to face a fear?