Dear Friends,
Sometimes I tiptoe into my two-year-old son’s bedroom at night when he’s asleep to make sure he’s breathing. Have you ever done the same thing with your children? I realize it’s completely irrational, but I have to make sure everyone in the house is safe and sound before I can go to sleep. How did I become so anxious?
After reading an article entitled, “Dad, the Ant Killer,” by M.O. Walsh, I was happy to learn I wasn’t alone in my anxiety. “I’m a dad, my superpower is worry,” writes Walsh about his efforts to protect his three-year-old son who has an acute allergy to fire ants. He concludes by noting that fire ants are just one of many threats that his son will face over his lifetime. Walsh won’t be able to protect his son entirely, but because he’s a dad, he will try. “What a relief,” I thought after finishing the article. Maybe I’m not crazy to fixate on how I can prevent secondary drowning, tick-borne diseases, scooter accidents, and sunburns from threatening my children.
Were parents always this anxious? My own certainly were. They insisted I couldn’t go swimming after a meal until I waited 15 minutes. Otherwise, I might get a cramp and drown. On Halloween, I was told to refuse any candied apples while trick-or-treating because someone might have inserted razorblades in them.
Recently, I started reading Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Child Rearing in America by Peter Stearns and discovered that parents have been anxious for over one hundred years. Stearns argues that during the first quarter of the 20th century, children were increasingly perceived by adults as fragile. No longer valued for their economic contributions to the family, children were now priceless and vulnerable to an array of threats. To illustrate how persistent the fragile child paradigm remains, Stearns describes a common late 20th century school assignment that resonated with me because I experienced it directly. In middle school, everyone in my class was given a raw egg to care for during the week. We were supposed to draw a face on the egg and pretend that it was our child. The intention of the lesson was to teach us about the enormous responsibility of caring for children. Stearns asks “Why use such a breakable object? Was this really a useful representation of young children?”
Rather than worry about my children’s vulnerabilities, I need to focus on their resiliency and remind myself that they can get right back up again after falling down. My son demonstrated this resiliency a few weeks ago when I took him to see the train arrive in East Hampton. He was extremely excited and started to run ahead of me on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, he tripped over his feet and fell on his face. When I picked him up, blood was gushing from his mouth, tears were flowing and he had chipped a tooth. “Why don’t we go back home?” I asked him. “No, see TRAIN!” was his response. The icepack and call to the dentist could wait until after we sat and watched the 6pm train arrive in the station and then leave for New York City.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories about the unexpected anxiety of parenthood. Feel free to share them on our Facebook wall or e-mail me.
Sincerely,
Steve