AI-assisted summary

Facing his own fear of jumping off a dock helped a father understand his son's seemingly irrational fear of going upstairs alone at night.

The father realized that fear, whether rational or not, feels real and can be difficult to overcome.

He learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act despite it.

The experience taught him the importance of empathy and validation in parenting, rather than control and correction.

I stood at the edge of a two-story dock, frozen.

An hour earlier, we had left our son at a birthday party on a two-story dock overlooking the lake. While he stayed to have fun, my wife, daughter, and I joined with some friends — who also had a son at the party — on the other side of the lake.

As we arrived, I witnessed one of m

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