“Are you comfortable with that?”
Let me tell you a little about the mom who asked her daughter this question recently at Daystar Counseling Ministries, where I’ve been counseling girls and their families for 27 years.
I was about to do an assessment, which means meet with a new child and family to Daystar.
I knew that the girl was 8 and showing signs of anxiety. As you’ve likely read, anxiety is now a childhood epidemic in our country, affecting 1 in 4 kids. Girls are twice as likely to suffer from it as boys. The jury is still out on the average age of onset, but it’s typically between six and eight. So, honestly, this girl fit the profile of almost every eight–year–old I see for counseling.
I walked down the stairs to the lobby and saw her sitting across the room immediately. I smiled at her. She smiled back. I walked over and said, like I do for every assessment, “Hey _______. I’m so glad to meet you. My name’s Sissy. I’m excited you’re here. I want to show you around the Daystar house and then we’re going to go talk for a minute. And I’ve got a dog named Lucy in my office who is going to be especially excited to meet you, too.” She smiled even bigger and hopped up to follow me. When she did, her mom grabbed her arm and said the dreaded question, “Are you comfortable with that?”
She was…until her mom asked. In that moment, her face fell and the anxiety crept over it. Her mom proceeded to follow us on our entire tour and sat in the chair across from my office (rather than downstairs where most parents wait) the entire time I was with her. Before they left, she asked the same “comfortable” question four more times. She also told me that she, herself, had struggled with anxiety when she was a child.
Therein lies what I believe is a big part of the problem. Children with a parent who suffers from anxiety are seven times more likely to experience anxiety themselves. “Why,” you may ask? Yes, anxiety can definitely be genetic. We see it run in families often. But there is a purely genetic component of that as well as an environmental one. And I believe those two often come together in the following traps:
1) Overidentifying
Years ago, a mom I worked with kept telling me her daughter had anxiety “just like her.” The daughter didn’t. She was just introverted. But the mom interpreted her daughter’s introversion as social anxiety. They’re different—one is more of a temperament issue and the other is more fear-based. But when her child would prefer to be with one friend rather than a group, or didn’t want to go to two birthday parties in one weekend, this well-intentioned mom placed her own emotions on her daughter’s actions. It’s easy to do. It’s especially easy to do if you’ve struggled with anxiety in the past.
2) Overcompensating
When I speak at parenting conferences, I’ll often ask, “How many of you had parents who were really in tune to your emotions growing up?” It’s usually about 5% of the room that raises their hands. I’ve come to believe that, in response, one of the primary problems today is that parents are overcompensating. You wish your mom had listened to your worries…and so you listen to hers. And listen. And listen again—sometimes to her worries more than her accomplishments. What you give attention to is what’s reinforced, after all. Maybe you wish your parents hadn’t made you do something that made you afraid at a certain age—spend the night out, learn to waterski, etc. And so now you don’t want to push your daughter in the way your parents pushed you. Here’s the thing. The worry experts agree that to work through anxiety, any of us—kids included—just have to do the scary thing. Back in the day, many of our parents didn’t know how to provide emotional support while we did the scary thing, however. You can.
3) Overcatastrophizing
The final trap many parents fall into is overcatastrophizing. Parents who are anxious tend toward language that is sometimes bigger than the situation warrants. “That sounds terrifying!” Or “It was horrible!” when it really wasn’t—or isn’t terrifying. Be aware of your language about her life—and yours. She needs you to model your own confidence and grit in order to help her develop hers. Kids with anxiety see the problem as bigger and themselves as smaller. Overcatastrophizing only enlarges the problem.
As a parent, self-awareness is one of the greatest gifts you can give your children. You want to be aware of how you were raised and how your parents responded to your own worries. That awareness can lead to even more empathy on your part—and encouragement. She is capable. As her mom, you have an ability to speak to her confidence and her belief in herself in a way that no one else can. Remind her regularly of how brave she is. How strong. How much you believe in who God’s made her to be. And listen and hug and love on her lots, too. It’s both things. Your care and your confidence in her will help her not only feel loved but feel believed in. And that combination is what she longs for most—at every age.
