My grandparents raised me, and they weren’t around much. I was often without adult supervision, and in an effort to protect me, they injected a healthy dose of fear into their parenting. And though it did instill both discernment and resilience, it also created anxiety.
While the origins of many of the stories that scared me didn’t come directly from them, they perpetuated the myth and often added to it. I remember, at the age of 8, watching a movie as a family about the slow fallout of a nuclear war. No discussions followed the movie, no attempts to assuage my fears, even when I told them about the nightmares that came in the weeks after.
The things my grandparents warned me about often became a recurring theme of my childhood nightmares. Though their intentions were good, telling them about my fear just seemed to solidify their commitment to parenting me this way.
I wanted to parent differently
Before I became a parent myself, I talked with my grandparents about my upbringing. They told me they had figured I was better off scared than dead. I reminded them of all the ways my anxiety manifested with the chronic nightmares and fears around everything from death to nuclear war, but they offered no apologies. I knew I wanted to parent differently.
At 30, I had a son. Over the next eight years, I had three more kids. Rather than pull scary tales from the daily news or the town rumor mill, I kept them sheltered. When they asked about issues I thought could be frightening, I tried to explain in a way that was both direct and sensitive. Sometimes, the overwhelming anxiety I struggled with made it difficult, though I don’t think I knew it at the time.
I learned that my son dealt with similar anxieties
Retrospection can be difficult as a parent. It often provides an overarching, distanced perspective we don’t have when our children are little. Maybe this was why I was caught off guard when my 20-year-old son came over to have dinner one night and announced, “I’m afraid of everything.”
When I asked what “everything” included, he delivered a list as long as my own. It included driving, fire, water, and a million other things.
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“You passed all the fear from when you grew up to me,” he said. Though I had aimed to raise my children differently from how my grandparents parented me, we had seemingly achieved a similar result. I, too, had created fear, which morphed into anxiety. My son carried it into adulthood just as I had.
As we said our goodbyes, I thought back to my early years as a parent. I told my kids to be careful with electricity. “Don’t plug that in,” I heard myself saying from almost two decades prior, “you might get shocked or start a fire.” At the beach, warnings were issued about swimming too far out without adult supervision.
“You told us never to swim alone,” my son said, “and I remember swimming with friends and searching for an adult. At 13, it became embarrassing.”
The truth hurt, but it wasn’t all bad
Looking back at how I’d parented in contrast to my intention was eye-opening. I didn’t even realize I had anxiety until my 40s. I assumed everyone lived the way that I did — in a perpetual state of fear.
“I didn’t know,” I told my son. Then, I did what I’ve always done when I make a mistake: I told him I was sorry.
He told me it was OK, before adding, “It is probably part of the reason I made it to adulthood.” While I was truly grateful for his forgiveness and understanding, I knew I needed to start doing things differently with my youngest two children, now 14 and 12. I’ve gone to therapy and also realized the value of taking medication to control my anxiety.
What I am trying to do now is instill confidence in my kids. My fears oozed onto everything I did and affected the way I parented. I suppose, like my grandparents, I was just doing my best to make sure my kids were safe.
