Fear For Our Children Is A Natural Feeling

Looking at our crazy world, I often think about what values are most important to instill in our children? I don't know what and how. I just know that you need to raise your kids with the greatest love and in love, raise a person with values not only for things, not only for school grades, not only for being first, not only for being the best, not only for being the most beautiful, not only for constant praise. Raise them as your heart tells you, not the most sophisticated books or programs. When raising children, I do everything only from my inner feelings.

I've been struggling with my life a bit lately. Well, the winter in Lithuania is always too cold for me, and it's the hardest time, and everything, it seems, is going badly for me. But perhaps that is why I want to pass on peace and high self-esteem, ease to my children with all my heart, because I did not bring that from my childhood, and everything I have inside and outside is earned by myself, in adulthood.

I still think that life can and should be easy, and constant tension and struggle are a lie, and that constant struggle brings nothing to life, except tension. And the least children need is parents who are constantly tense. When it is possible to march gently through life, let's do that. And let's leave our fears for more complex life situations. I still think fear is a normal and good feeling because it helps me protect myself and my children. But when we see that fear is stopping us from life, when it turns into unproductive anxiety, then it is probably worth overcoming it little by little.

It seems to me that fear for children is a natural feeling. But psychology books helped me clear a lot of anxiety from myself, because I dug to the root of it. Then anxiety is eaten by knowledge, and it is precisely ignorance that feeds it. If we want to overcome anxiety about our children, we need to get as many answers as possible about various threatening situations. What will happen if I leave my child for a few hours without his mother and the child cries? What happens if the child gets sick with something terrible? It seems to me that you need to name your fears out loud and try to answer them. If you don't know how to answer yourself, think about how you would answer your worried friend. Look up statistics, numbers. Many of our fears have a minimal statistical probability.

When my fears resurface, thinking about the emotions I bring up in my children helps me a lot. I know that if I am afraid of something, they will be afraid too. Or my anxiety will bounce to them in some other way.

But there's no need to beat yourself up like crazy, you can learn little by little. I remember how nervous I was about going out alone with my two children for the first time. But I gave myself some time and after a while I went out. Now I don't have those fears anymore. What other option do I have? Lock myself in the house and not go anywhere until my husband comes back? What if he leaves for a week? And I feel unhappy when I close myself in. But if such closure brings happiness to someone, great. Neither their way is wrong, nor mine. After all, people are different.

To tell the truth, nothing bad happened during that time. The baby cried once while we were walking outside. I couldn't calm her down, so I had to stop, pick her up and hold her close to me for half an hour, while my son collected pebbles from the road and learned to count them. Once she cried in the store because she wanted to sleep and couldn't fall asleep, so we went to the development room, sat quietly and she calmed down. There were some inconveniences, but mostly it was fun and just easier than staying locked up at home all the time.

So, let's leave the children in peace. Everything is fine with them already. They already know how to be happy. But do we, parents, know this? Do we truly live by it? Children usually bring up a lot of feelings in us that are not even about them, but about us and our hidden pains. Let's see, accept, and open up. Let's learn to be happy first ourselves, if we want our children to grow up being happy people.