Anxiety

Never would have described myself as an anxious person. In fact, I grew up feeling downright courageous compared with my mother, who was quite confident that there was always a pedophile on the playground and strapped us into the car with special 5-point harnesses that she must have purchased from NASA, as this was the 70’s and carseats and booster seats as we know them now just didn’t exist. Kids just sat in the long front row of the station wagon, or four to five across the back seat with maybe a lap belt. Not in our car, they didn’t. But I digress.

When I had my first child, I was so clear that I was going to be a different kind of mother.  Serenely confident in my children’s ability to manage the world, perfectly reasonable about safety and letting my kids take age-appropriate risks. I didn’t actually think about it with that kind of language. I just saw myself not thinking every ache and pain was the first sign of leukemia or Lyme disease. Letting them ride bikes in the neighborhood. (With helmets, of course. I’m not a monster.) Walk themselves to school once they felt ready. Going rollerblading and skiing without having to watch their mother hyperventilate. Little things, really.

Turns out, not so easy. Our son had his first fever at 4 months old, when I had just returned to work.  My husband called me at work to let me know.  My stomach dropped and throat tightened. “Should I come home?,” I demanded. “Why?” my actually unflappable husband responded. “I don’t know. Should you call the doctor?” (It’s helpful to point out here that my husband is a doctor, a pediatrician, an emergency room pediatrician at that. He knows fevers and sick kids and when to be worried. And I know it. But suddenly that didn’t matter.)

“Look, he’s fine. He has a runny nose and a fever. If he looks lethargic after some Tylenol, then we’ll talk. But he’s fine. I just wanted to tell you. It’s his first fever.”

“Okay,” I exhaled.

That was orientation in my PhD program in Anxiety Studies. Turns out having a child is like having one of your vital organs walking around outside your body. And as they grow, avoiding potential catastrophes, there are just new risks on the horizon. I suppose I should have noticed this during pregnancy, when we got through the 1^st trimester risks (miscarriage!) to greet the amnio (chromosomes!) then ultrasounds to rule out other developmental problems. It never ends. And definitely not with delivery.

But who you are as a parent does matter. While my husband was not worried by fevers or accidents (really, you’d have to have arterial bleeding to get my husband worried), there were things which worried him. Our son, our first child, was (and is) incredibly sweet and even-tempered, an easy baby, toddler and preschooler. He slept through the night without a fuss (he actually sang himself to sleep; I think he soothed us). He moved into his big-boy bed the day we set it up, when we thought he would need weeks to transition. (“What’s that?” he grinned. “That’s going to be your new bed; you can start taking naps in it tomorrow,” was our carefully planned response. “Can I just sleep in it tonight?” He did. And mom and dad were the ones who went to bed with tears. Our baby!) He used his words. He cooperated. He even rolled with it when his baby sister came home right in the middle of what was supposed to be his terrible two’s. You get the picture.

So when this supernatural child was three, he and I were in the kitchen one evening. He asked me for a cookie and I said he would have to wait until after dinner. This reasonable response was followed by a loud WHUMP. I spun to see him laying on the flower motionless, eyes closed. I screamed for my husband and dove for him in what was surely cinematic clumsiness. His dad trotted in, “what’s up?”

“He’s breathing, but not responsive! Could he be having a seizure? Maybe he’s hypoglycemic, he wanted a cookie!”

“Hmmm. I think he’s having a tantrum.”

“Whaaaa?” I exhaled. Of course! A tantrum! I popped up, smiling even. “Wow. That has got to be the funniest tantrum I have ever seen.” And remember, I’m a child psychiatrist.

My husband did not look so delighted. “Do you think this is normal? I mean, not screaming or anything? Could he be depressed or have anxiety or something?”

Hello! My miraculously zen spouse does have anxiety.  It’s about anxiety! Or more precisely, it’s about the possibility of psychiatric problems and even mild behavioral issues in our kids. Not me. I feel like I would know what to do about most of that stuff. Not that it’s pleasant or easy, mind you. But it’s familiar territory for me. Maybe this is a big part of anxiety and parenting. That you fear certain dreaded events, but when you know what to do or at least that this event is normal and will work itself out, you just don’t feel so worried.

Meanwhile, our little prince is still laying on the kitchen floor, motionless, eyes closed. Now more wonderfully funny than terrifying or heartbreaking.

“Let’s just ignore him for a few minutes,” I suggest. And we do. And our boy eventually gets bored and moves on to building a suspension bridge with Lego’s or reading the encyclopedia or some other age-inappropriate activity. We should just be reassured that he finally had a tantrum. And so, the PhDprogram continues. My husband is enrolled also. For subsequent children, you can skip some of the course requirements. But they are still addiitonal degrees. Ones that will probably- hopefully- never be finished.

And by the way, next day I got a phone call from his preschool. They were worried that he might have had a seizure when he went to ground after a disagreement with another child…