Why I Keep Putting the Brakes on Roller Coasters — and Why I’m Finally Questioning That
The line swayed in the July heat. My son, Leo, 8 years old, was standing on his tiptoes, trying to see over the fence to the looping track above us. The coaster was called the Python’s Revenge, and it did three full inversions. He was holding my hand, squeezing it every few seconds, and his cheeks were pink with excitement.
“Mom, Mom, look — that kid is like my size! And he went twice already.”
I looked at the kid. He was maybe a year older. He looked fine. But all I could see was the sign at the entrance: “Riders must be 48 inches or taller. May cause neck and back strain.”
Leo is 51 inches. He’s also clumsy in the morning, forgets to drink water, and once fell off a swing while standing up. I know that last part is irrelevant. But it hovered in my mind anyway.
The attendant rattled off the safety speech. A family whooped as the train clicked up the lift. Leo turned to me, expectant.
“So? Can we go?”
I said: “Let’s watch it one more time first.”
He sighed, dramatically, the way only a third-grader can. I watched the train plunge. It didn’t look scary. It looked exactly like every other video we’d watched on YouTube the night before, the ones he’d used to persuade me into agreeing to this trip in the first place.
“Okay” — I swallowed — “your dad can take you.”
Max, my husband, raised an eyebrow. He’d been silent this whole time, letting me make the call. That was his way.
Then Leo said something that made my stomach drop: “But why won’t you come with me?”
I didn’t have a clean answer. I mumbled something about motion sickness and how the jerk of the first drop always hurts my back. Leo didn’t really argue. He just shrugged and walked with Max toward the entrance, and I stood by the exit gate, holding our water bottles and sunscreen, watching the train disappear into the first dark tunnel.
He came out grinning, hair messy, eyes wide.
“Mom! It was SO fast! The first drop — your stomach goes bzzzt — I want to do it again!”
And there it was: the familiar knot in my chest. Pride, maybe. Relief. And a new wave of dread, because I knew we had four more hours in this park.
That evening, after the ride, after the meltdown at the souvenir shop, after Max and I got Leo bathed and into bed, I sat on the porch and asked myself the question I’d been avoiding: Am I wrong for not wanting him on those rides?
I’m not the kind of parent who hovers at the playground. I let Leo climb trees — supervised but not hovering. Last spring, he did a two-day school camping trip and didn’t even call home. He has scraped his knees more times than I can count, and I’ve never worried about any of those things. But roller coasters feel different. They’re unnatural, engineered, and they move so fast. The speed, the G-forces, the fact that you’re strapped into a seat with no steering wheel and no way out.
Partly, it’s a control thing. In most risky situations, Leo’s in charge of his own body — climbing, running, jumping. On a coaster, he’s completely passive. His safety depends entirely on the machine, the track, the guy who bolts on the restraints. And, let’s be honest, on my judgment of whether the park is reputable.
But here’s the part I didn’t want to admit on that porch: the fear isn’t really about Leo’s physical safety. It’s about how it feels to watch him not need me.
Because when Leo rides a coaster, he isn’t just having fun. He’s stepping out of the space where I can protect him and into a space where I’m a spectator. He’s saying: I can handle this thing that feels big and fast and scary, and I don’t ask for permission to enjoy it.
That was the real gut-punch. It always has been.
So, am I wrong?
I’ve started to think it’s not a yes-or-no question. It’s more like a scale that needs constant recalibrating.
On one side, there’s a legitimate consideration: not every child is ready for every ride at the same age. Kids have different physical tolerance, different thresholds for sensory input, and different emotional readiness. My nephew, at 9, hated the Pirates of the Caribbean boat ride — not because it was dangerous, but because the sudden darkness scared him senseless. My other nephew, 10, has ridden a half-pipe coaster and cried because the pressure in his ears hurt. The signs at the entrance have height minimums, but they don’t account for a child’s personality. Part of a parent’s job is knowing their own kid. Leo is generally bold, sometimes impulsive. He forgets that his body gets tired. He’s prone to headaches in the afternoon heat. So me rationing the big rides isn’t purely fear — it’s also noticing that he’s a kid who doesn’t always listen to his own body’s signals. Someone needs to be the brakes.
But the other side is trickier. Research on child development is pretty clear: children build resilience by taking manageable risks in a supportive context. The protective parent who says no to everything doesn’t teach safety — she teaches anxiety. Kids need to test their own limits. They need to say “I was scared, but I did it anyway” a hundred times before they’re teenagers who need to say that in tougher situations. A roller coaster is the easiest, safest version of that. The ride ends in two minutes. The real risk of serious injury is incredibly low. The memory of surviving, though, lasts a long time.
Here’s what changed my mind a little this summer. We went back to the park a month later, and Leo wanted to try a smaller coaster — the Wild Boar, which doesn’t invert but has one big drop. I agreed to ride it with him. I’ll be honest: I white-knuckled the bar the whole time. Leo whooped next to me. Afterward, he put his hand on my arm and said, “You did it, Mom. You didn’t even scream that much.”
That moment shifted something. It wasn’t that I was suddenly comfortable. It was that I realized I don’t have to be the one next to him every time. I just have to be honest about my own limits. I told him, “I don’t love the feel of those big drops. But I like seeing how happy it makes you. Can we make a plan next time where you go with Dad and I wave from the bench?”
He was quiet for a second. Then he said, “That’s okay. Someone has to hold the lemonade.”
It sounds like such a small thing. But for us, it was a shift from “No because I’m scared” to “Yes, and here’s what I need to stay okay while you enjoy this.” He got to be brave. I got to be honest. We both got to feel right.
Now, as the summer winds down, I still find myself saying no more often than other parents might. Coaster lines with two-hour waits, mega-hyper rides that go 120 feet into the air — those I’m still not on board for. And Leo knows it. He asks. He pushes. Sometimes I say no, and he’s genuinely disappointed, and I let him be disappointed without swooping in to fix it. Because honestly, wanting something and not getting it right away is also a lesson worth practicing.
What I’ve slowly accepted is that being “right” about roller coasters isn’t the goal. The goal is being in a relationship where he can ask, I can answer honestly, and we can both survive the disappointment and the thrill. That means I have to tolerate my own fear being visible — because he’s watching what I do with that feeling, not just what I say.
The other day at the bus stop, a mother was telling me her daughter was begging to go on a teen bring-your-beast park trip. The girl is 11, already taller than Leo, and physically confident. But this mom kept saying, “I just don’t know if she’s mature enough. What if she’s scared in line? What if she doesn’t want the ride and she’s stuck?”
I heard myself answer: “You don’t have to decide today. You can go watch the rides with her first. Let her see one, talk it through. See if she’s being brave because she actually wants it, or because her friends say so. Then decide together. It doesn’t have to be all yes or all no.”
She looked at me like I’d given her an answer. I felt like I was talking to an earlier version of myself, standing in that hot July line, looking at the Python’s Revenge.
So am I wrong? I’m less worried about that now. Some days I’m the parent who waves from the bench. Some days, if it’s a coaster with a smooth track and a gentle start, I’ll strap in next to Leo and keep my eyes on the horizon. It always scares me. He always loves it. And that gap between us isn’t a failure — it’s just where we are.
Tomorrow he’ll ask about the biggest one in the park, the one with the vertical drop. I’ll probably say no. We’ll argue. Then he’ll go to the backyard and practice flipping off the trampoline, and I’ll watch through the kitchen window, wondering whether there’s a difference. Maybe the truth is that I don’t get to keep him safe. I only get to keep showing up with him, in my own way, until he’s ready to ride without me at all.
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