My daughter and I have been hiking a lot. Like, a lot a lot. We’re lucky to live a stone’s throw away from a large State Park, and now more than ever we’re taking advantage of it. And while I’ve spent enough time hiking in my life to have the basics down (Appalachian Trail, camp counselor stuff in my youth, basically the standard “I like hiking!” kind of experience) I sometimes have to remember that my daughter is just learning these basics for herself. As her mom, it’s my job to help teach her, which is so cool, but for her, also … well, to be honest, moms can be kind of a drag sometimes, right?

So when I told her to get her shoes on to go for a hike, and she showed up in her bright yellow rain boots, I told her, “Those aren’t really meant for hiking, go find something better.” 

“But I LOVE them!” she countered.

“They’ll hurt your feet,” I said, then stopped. I was thiiiiiis close to telling her to take them off, to go find the right shoes again, but something in me held back. I waited, instead, to see how she would respond to this (obviously sage) advice. 

“I really want to wear these,” she said, my spitfire red-headed firecracker.

“All right!” I heard myself say. “Do you have your hat?” She nodded. 

It wasn’t that I had decided the boots would feel fine. I knew that they wouldn’t. But I realized that this particular moment was being offered to me on a Teaching A Lesson silver platter; the trail we were going to go to was flat, short, and simple, out in the open and not woodsy; gravel, but smoothed from use, with soft grass to one side. If she was going to learn a lesson, this would be the kind of lesson I could offer without it being Awful. Uncomfortable? Yes. She was going to be uncomfortable. Blisters would probably happen. But as I drove us to the trail-head, I decided: so be it.

We began our hike. Minutes passed, she skipped happily, we spotted birds we recognized and those we didn’t. She walked a little slower. She picked up stones and examined them, pointed out funny shaped leaves on the low-hanging trees that lined one side of the trail. Finally, she stopped.

“Mama?”

I knew what was coming. “Mmhmm?” I asked.

“My feet hurt.”

We stopped. I crouched down to her level. “Remember what I said about the boots?”

She nodded. I expected whining, tears, a complaint. But none came. “Yeah,” she said. She paused, thinking. “Can I take them off and carry them?”

I considered this. On one hand, I wasn’t a huge fan of walking barefoot in public places. On the other hand, this was a park, out in nature, and snakes and poison ivy had so far not made an appearance. “You have to carry the boots,” I said. “I’m not carrying them.”

“Okay.” She paused again. “I’ll wear the right shoes next time, I think.”

And then she was carrying her boots happily, picking her way carefully along. We walked a little slower, but we finished our hike, and all was well.

I know the Good Mom thing to do would have been to insist on wearing the right shoes to begin with. But honestly? I’m glad I didn’t. Because maybe — just maybe — next time she’ll remember for herself what choice is the smart one to make. Letting my daughter make her own choices and then live with the consequences — in this case, uncomfortable feet — is a gift I’m choosing to give her, even if it doesn’t necessarily appear that way from the outside. But learning to make good choices, and knowing your mom is there to give you advice, and talk to about those choices without making you feel bad if you made the wrong one? That’s a powerful gift. I’d rather she choose the wrong shoes once, and remember the blisters, than have me protect her feet for her every step of her growing up years. 

So take the risk. Make the conscious choice not to overshadow every off-kilter decision they make. They’re learning, and our job is to help them do that.