Trusting yourself & Try for yourself: The Little Horse Crosses the River

That Classic Story About the Little Horse

I was reading The Little Horse Crosses the River to my kid the other night. It’s one of those stories you remember from childhood, but hearing it again as an adult hits differently.

You know the plot: the little horse needs to cross a river with a sack of wheat. He asks a cow, who says, “It’s shallow! No problem!” Then he asks a squirrel, who panics: “It’s deep! You’ll drown!” Confused, he runs back to his mom. Instead of telling him what to do, she just says, “Why don’t you try it yourself and see?”

And that’s the whole point, really. It’s not really about a river. It’s about what happens when you get conflicting advice — something that happens to kids and adults all the time. The cow wasn’t lying, and neither was the squirrel. They were just speaking from their own reality. The little horse had to find his own.

I like this story because it doesn’t give a magic answer. The mom doesn’t solve it for him. She just points him back toward his own courage. And when he finally steps in, he finds the water isn’t too shallow or too deep — it’s just right for him.

It’s a quiet lesson in trusting yourself. Listening is important, but so is knowing when to take that first step and see for yourself. Not a bad reminder, whether you’re six or sixty.