True Friends

Today was Cassie's field trip to Appleton's 'Building for Kids'. It was a good, but tiring day.

Towards the end of the day my group of 4 kids went to play on an area that could best be described as a tree house. There was a fake tree that went from the first floor up through to the high ceiling of the second floor. On the second floor was a platform that wrapped around the tree and lead into a cargo-net tunnel. You climbed up this tunnel to the upper treehouse that was up at the ceiling level.

Anyway, Cassie broke into tears because she was scared of the tree. I never said that her fears were normal. In her defense though, the tree looked like several small trees grew together to form it. I tried to tell her that it wasn't a real tree and such, but it did nothing to help her. Then one of her classmates came over and started talking to her. She walked around with Cassie calming her down. Then Samantha came over and hugged Cassie. Finally Cassie did go into the treehouse.

You could tell that Cassie wanted to go up to upper part, but she would just look at the cargo-net and look down at the first floor below and start crying. At this point there were 10 minutes left before we had to head down to the bus. Two of Cassie's best friends, Allison and Samantha, came over to talk to her again. They talked to her and helped her up the cargo-net. Samantha crawled with her part way, they yelled at kids that were making the net move as Cassie was going up, and they cheered her on. Literally. They chanted...Go Cassie, Go Cassie. By the time she got up to the upper treehouse there was about 5 kids up there cheering her on and celebrating as she climbed into the treehouse with them.

On the way down everyone waited for her and helped her as her braces got stuck or she got nervous looking down.

I watched this, a proud mom, and had to hold back the tears. Not only was I happy with how brave Cassie was being, but in her friends. Talk about true friends.