A few years ago when my daughter was about 7 she got a new bed. This was one of those "fancy" bunk beds that has the bed on top with the drawers and desk in between the bottom trundle bed that you can pull out when they have a sleep over or when the situation call for a little extra sleeping space. When we set the bed up Aubree was very excited about her new sleeping options and all the toys and junk she could store in the many cubbies and drawers in between.
Once the bed was set up, my "mother fear" instantly kicked in. "Wow, that is really high up there" I mumbled to myself. My "mother fear" is what I like to call the part of me that can think of every bad thing that could possibly happen to my child and my innate instinct to try and protect her from any of the bad options. In spite of my daughter's delight I decided to put myself at ease and make sure that the railings surrounding the top bed were high enough that they would stop her from falling off if she rolled over during the night. I climbed up the ladder and laid on the bed. Once I was comfortable I began rolling around from side to side to test the capability of the safety bars. I get to a point where I felt it was pretty safe so I had to test it a bit further. I began rolling violently from this way to that to see how hard she would have to hit the side of the rails in the middle of the night before she would fall off. I'm sure I was quite a sight to be seen!
Happy with my evaluation and able to quiet the voice of my fears I communicated to my daughter that she had absolutely nothing to worry about and was then able to try and share in her delight of sleeping 6 foot off the ground.
A couple days went by and she successfully slept in her new bed however every night I continued to worry about hearing a thump in the middle of the night. Knowing exactly that the cause of the thump would be my beautiful little girl hitting the floor because she rolled off the top of her bed.
None of these fears were verbally communicated to her however, after a few days she began refusing to sleep on the top bunk. We would pull out the trundle and she would sleep there for reasons that I could not figure out for the life of me. And then one day it occurred to me. She sat and watched my ridiculous display of thrashing around on her bed. She watched my apprehension and could SEE my worries even though they were not communicated to her directly. I had instilled in her that she needed to be afraid of sleeping on the top bunk.
I use this story as an example because so many times we teach our children to be fearful and to feel inadequate or anxious in simple parts of everyday life. This experience was an eye opener for me. Children learn what they live. Many times the fears or inadequacies we hold in our lives are something that have been learned in us over the years, not just something we are born with.
My question to you is what are you afraid of? Where does it come from? Is it something you can remember learning? I believe that if we are able to evaluate the root of our fears it is easier to challenge and confront them.
I talk about the "mom fear” and "mom guilt" a lot in the parenting classes that I teach because I truly believe that it strongly influences the way we parent our children and the way we care for ourselves.
What is one of your "mom fears" and how do you think it affects your parenting?
