Exams, school trips, and family vacations often lead younger riders into extended periods of time without riding. Many of those riders will feel a tinge of anxiety when they get ready to ride again. They often conjure up every memory of every imperfect ride, exaggerate it greatly and cause it to grow into a real fear of riding.
That is when parental intervention is the most important. Parents need to explain to the kids that it is normal to feel that way and that the cure is to get on and ride and within 1/2 an hour the fear will go away. The child should ride more than normal when such fears come into play.
The worst step for a parent is to take actions that feed into that fear--for example, having the child "work slowly back into riding", as in skipping rides until the confidence come back. Such strategy makes it nearly impossible for the confidence to return. Even worse is to allow the child to "decide on her own" when she is ready to ride again. Children do not have the emotional maturity to make such decisions and it is wrong to force them to do so. In fact, deciding whether to ride causes more stress than riding itself. Allowing a child to say "I think that I would rather just brush my horse today and I will ride next time.", increases stress. "I think that I would rather just work my horse in the round pen today," is just as bad.
The very worst thing a parent can do is to allow a child, whose stress may genuinely causes them to feel bad or one who simply pretends to be sick, to stay home because they "are not feeling well today". the child quickly associates stress with illness and "sickness" with being a solution to avoiding adverse situations. Such parenting causes hypochondria.
Riding stress, and overcoming it, is about much more than just riding. It is about one's attitude towards all of life's challenges. It is about giving a child the confidence to have a happy adult life. It is about caring enough about your child to require him to do something that he may not want to do.
The rallying cry of today's parents all to often is "I certainly don't want to force my child into doing something that they do not want to." Somehow such an abdication of parental responsibility has become viewed as a virtue.
As soon as the child comes to understand that he has no choice in the matter his stress will go down. As soon as he learns that it does not matter how sick he feels, and that he will feel better as soon as he gets a few hours quickly back in the saddle, he will remember how much he loves it.
Love requires firmness. Parents need to simply tell the child that his feelings are normal, that they will go away after a few hours in the saddle, that he is going to ride, that it does not matter if he feels bad, riding will make him feel better, it does not matter if he wants to--none of that matters--there is no debate and the child has no decision that he has to make.
I have been told many times by little riders--'I am glad I had to ride to day. It was so much fun. I do not know why I was afraid."
Well, I do know why they were afraid. It is entirely normal. I understand it entirely and I know that there is one quick, simple cure. I also understand that the failure to administer that cure has lifelong consequences.
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