Back to school! And with it a mix of tears and joy from all the mamas out there. It’s an exciting and stressful time of year. Our minds start racing; school supplies, teacher announcements, the bus schedule, after school activities. It’s no wonder sometimes our own anxiety comes into play. But just how much is our own anxiety affecting our kids?
I’ve heard a lot of back to school stories through the years. A client once explained to me how she was not allowing her son to take the bus to school “ever”. As we dove deeper into this I soon learned of her own valid traumatic bus experience as a child. It made perfect sense she wanted to protect her son from this. It’s the same reason I had a client tell me that she requests her child’s teacher every year because she herself had “the meanest 1st grade teacher alive” and it scarred her for life. Ladies, I get it. I have been there with the traumatic childhood experiences and the wanting to protect your children. But what are we teaching our kids if we are not allowing them to create their own experiences?
Am I suggesting you let your child suffer? No. Never. Of course not. But we can’t go around spraying the fire extinguisher when there is no fire, because it still creates a mess. If we are openly (or not so openly) anxious about something, our children will get a message. Maybe the message is “the bus is unsafe”. Maybe the message is “you can’t handle hard things”. Maybe the message will be “nothing bad ever happens to me” because you’ll do that good of a job protecting them. But then what? The world won’t do the same. We are not here to protect them from everything. We are here to help them with everything.
Almost every client who has shared an unresolved childhood trauma with me answers one question the same. The question is, “How did the adults in your life handle that trauma”? The answer is, “not so well”. And there you have it. That is your power. That is what you can do to promote a different outcome. When the fire comes, you can handle it WITH your child. TOGETHER you will get through it, not around it or ten feet from it. Then they will get the right message, that they can navigate hard things and handle things that are unpredictable, that they are strong and that they can count on you to help them. They will learn to lean into you instead of never being given that opportunity at all.
When it comes to our children, let’s not create anxiety or remove every possible obstacle to prevent it. Let’s manage it when it happens. And that starts with recognizing, understanding and managing our own.
Rachel
