The Young and the Restless | Facing fears, face first

The brothers whose birthday it isn’t also get the option of joining whatever activity the birthday boy selects.

Sometimes that works in everyone’s favour, like taking my youngest to the zoo for his birthday.

I mean, who doesn’t enjoy the zoo? Animals, plants, conservation programs, learning opportunities, close-up experiences with exotic animals you’d never have a chance of getting that close to in the wild (and in most cases shouldn’t want to either — think free-roaming lions that close to your head, nuh uh, no thanks).

But what happens when one brother chooses something that terrifies the other two yet still needs a wingman to bolster his own waning courage after that initial burst of confidence he had when committing to the activity diminishes?

Mum gets the job of doing all the activities, whether she’s keen or not.

We all have fears.

But a logical fear to one’s self may seem like an irrational fear to someone else.

Lucky for my kids, I don’t scare easily.

This one particular year, my middle boy, whose birthday falls first on the calendar each year, chose to rap jump not once, but three times, down the sheer face of a seven-storey building overlooking a busy multi-lane freeway in Melbourne.

Rap jumping, or rappelling, is forward abseiling where you descend your wall/cliff/rock face first, for those who don’t know. It’s also incredibly fun (in a nerve-racking kind of way).

I could not let a 10-year-old go with a group of strangers to the top of the building alone and I could not shout loud enough from the ground seven storeys below to offer him reassurance and encouragement to step off that ledge.

While I don’t necessarily know what I’m looking at, I wanted to watch the way he was harnessed up and give it a yank myself to test stability, see what said harness was anchored to, inspect his safety equipment and listen to the safety briefing so I could reiterate to his little distracted ears what NOT to do in order to make the experience as safe as possible. (Can you say trust issues?)

He has a tiny little frame that I only slightly feared (but it existed in the back of mind) could potentially slip from the harness with its absence of child-bearing hips like his mother’s frame encompasses. THAT is probably MY irrational fear.

So, of course, I joined him for three jumps of my own.

This kid rocked the experience, despite being a touch too light and just needing a slight bit of assistance to ground him at the end of each jump.

The grins and the giggles weaved their way through his nervousness as he became more comfortable and brave with each jump, until he was left with an indestructible smile that lasted at least 24 hours after the experience ended.

Most kids will try abseiling with school on camps or excursions — even down rock walls after scaling them at neighbourhood entertainment venues — but this setting was a unique one to really push outside that zone of comfort we too often confine ourselves to.

Unfortunately this particular operator has closed permanently since we visited; however, I have rap-jumped down a 30-metre rock (aptly named Big Rock) in the You Yangs (near Geelong) with a couple of friends on a girls’ weekend since then, so it is still an activity that is accessible in Victoria if you’re looking to wow your adventure-seeking birthday child. (Or yourself, of course.)

Heights (and jumping from them) might not have been enough to intimidate my middle child, but what my eldest chose to do on his birthday that same year sure did.

And that, folks, is a story for next time.

Again, a logical fear to one’s self may seem like an irrational one to someone else.

But I’m all for facing them no matter which category they fall into.

— Bree Harding is a former Shepparton News reporter and a single mother to three children.