Tell me, other mothers out there, are you sometimes paralyzed with worry about your children?
My worry = cell phone for daughter
Such anxiety is a fairly new thing for me. Years ago when the little one had been with me about a year, I had a dream that I lost her. Since I woke up panicked, and not wishing I was back in the dream again, I took it as a really good sign. A sign of attachment. Whew.
Then came the scene at year ago, when an after-school program dropped my daughter and a group of other new middle-schoolers off at her old elementary school fifteen minutes early. She headed to the playground — not viewable from the street. I must have looked like a crazy woman when I finally found out, after waiting a half hour, that she had been dropped off 45 minutes earlier. I ran around the school, crying and talking to myself, until she was finally located.
The next day I bought the girl a cell phone, and put up with 2800 text messages a day–I kid you not, thank God for the unlimited plan–to be able to contact her at anytime, anyplace.
I’ve come to view that incident as jusified worry. Lately I would classify my anxiety as distinctly unjustified. On several occasions last week I panicked when picking her up at swimming when I got there after the pool door was locked, even though I knew there was an alternate way out of the locker room. I just didn’t know where that door was. One day I spent several hours talking myself out of driving across town to make sure she had made it to practice because she had neglected to text me when she got there.
Unfortunately, sometimes I take my worries out on my daughter, barking at her because she seems to often be wandering in an adolescent fog. And insensitivity. And self-centeredness. And navel gazing. All of which, I know, is normal at her age.
I’ve come to believe that my anxiety revolves around keeping her safe. But it has less to do with the realities of her safety and more to do with the realities of how safe I felt at her age.
Anyone else have this experience? Anyone have any tips for how to handle it?
Photo credit, I love you
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