Worry And Guilt - Part I
When it comes to our children, every parent has experienced the emotions of worry and guilt. In fact, I often tell my workshop participants that these two feelings in particular seem to go hand in hand with the title of Mom or Dad. Worry and guilt aren't necessarily negative of course. For example, maybe you have a nagging worry about your child's ongoing cough so you call the doctor one more time and discover that indeed, he has bronchitis. Or maybe you feel guilty because you blamed your daughter for something she didn't do, and your guilt causes you to apologize. These are the benefits of worry and guilt - they can act as a sort of conscience that nags at us until we put things right with our children. But there can be a negative side as well, and sometimes the anxiety or guilt we feel about our children can not only overwhelm us as parents, but have negative side-effects on our children as well.
Although parental worry and guilt often lead to the same thing in children * a lowered sense of self-esteem and a loss of confidence in their capabilities -- it's worth looking at each feeling separately to determine the different ways in which they cause this effect in children. Excessive worry, which we will define either as a consistent, general, non-specified feeling of uneasiness: "I just feel like something `bad' is going to happen" or recurrent / consistent anxiety about events that are unlikely to happen: "What if my child is kidnapped / gets run over by car / breaks her leg on the playground" can cause us to overprotect our children and prevent us from stimulating appropriate independence. This type of anxiety leads to parents limiting their children's activities, nagging their children to "be careful", or preventing their children from taking appropriate risks. Let's take a look at an example:
Sarah feels consistently anxious about her daughter, Susan's safety. From the time Susan was little, Sarah was always at her side, warning her not to go close to the pond in the park because she might fall in, telling her not to run because she might fall down and scrape her knee. As Susan grew, Sarah felt anxious that she might be molested when she went on a play date, and consequently limited the play dates to friends coming to her house. When Susan reached adolescence, and her friends were independently traveling around the city * to school, or to one another's houses * Sarah continued to accompany Susan whenever she had to go somewhere. Now 14, Susan is underachieving in school, seems withdrawn and is not staying connected with her friends. With these symptoms, it's quite possible that Susan is discouraged. When parents have this kind of on-going anxiety, they unintentionally lower their children's self-esteem. With regard to schoolwork, children often don't have the courage to raise their hand and ask appropriate questions, or won't risk being "wrong" and would rather give up than try in the first place. Children often lack the courage to
