How to NOT Pass on your Fears to Your Kids

There are so many times in my counseling office that I will meet with a child of any age, and then meet with the parent, and can clearly see that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  For some, the habits of the parents are so pervasive that the apple may still be hanging on their tree.  That old saying speaks to some of the nurture that parents naturally provide. If we are afraid of something we naturally pass that on to our kids.  Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.  This trend in my counseling office has led me to do some pondering.  How do we fix this?  We don’t want our kids to struggle with some of the fears and anxieties that we have.  Hopefully these tips will enlighten you, challenge you and help your family strive for balance.

1. Awareness- This is a critical step.  We do what we know until we become aware.  Spend some time thinking through your fears.  Your why. Why do you do what you do?  Do you spend hours choosing outfits, spending countless amounts of money on clothes so you and your kids fit in? Do you have such a fear of being alone that you constantly have someone around you, even if they are not a good influence? Do we have to be so busy performing, doing that there is no time alone to self reflect or lean into patterns of behavior that affect you?  Do your fears make your world smaller? You can’t go out at night or in crowds?  

Take a moment and really think about how you spend your time, your social media posts, your relationships, what you spend your money on.  What is your motivation?  In many people I see, the desire to fit in is so important that they wear themselves out for acceptance.  I have this friend who constantly is going out of her way to buy presents, host events, pay for anything needed.  She once spent her rent money to host a party for someone she was trying to impress.  In the end her fear of not being accepted affected her housing. Pretty extreme?  Take a moment.  Evaluate your why.  Become aware of why and how you do things.  Because your kiddos are watching.

2. Recognize your own fears. We all fear something. For me it is snakes.  I don’t like them. At all. Of course I have a son who loves all creatures.  One of his favorite outings as a kid was to go to a snake adventure in the next county.  I would put on a fake smile and muscle my way through this building of every kind of venomous creature you could imagine.  I did it because… I didn’t want my fear to be his fear.  So what do you fear?  What do you know is your kryptonite?  Heights? Needles? Spiders? Vomit? The list is endless.  I had a kiddo in counseling who lived and adapted to the family fears.  They were going to the beach for vacation.  BUT… They couldn’t get in the water because of a fear of sharks.  They couldn’t play in or touch the sand because it gets everywhere.  They were afraid to walk the beach because of strangers.  They didn’t want to pick up shells because of the germs on them and getting stung by jellyfish.  After processing all of these I was thinking this is going to be a terrible vacation.  We have to sort out feelings from facts. Fear is a good thing.  It keeps us alive.  But if your fears keep you from living your life that is where the problem is.  There needs to be a healthy balance.  Many times fears come from a traumatic or difficult experience.  So if I get stung by a jellyfish while walking the beach, I may be more hesitant to walk the beach in the future. If I have a terrible experience where a spider bites me and I have a huge reaction and have to go to the hospital, I am going to be a little more leary of spiders.  But fear needs balance.  I can’t wrap myself in bubble wrap so nothing bad ever happens, but I also can’t live recklessly not caring what is next. It is the balance that is important.  So rate your fears on a scale of 1-10.  One being not at all, 10 being the most distress you can imagine.  For the fears in the 8-9-10 category.  What is your why?  Is it rational?  Does it make sense?  Is that fear decreasing the quality of your life?  Your goal is to get those higher end fears down to a middle ground so they are not affecting you or your kids.  Because they are watching you.

3. Kids are intuitive.  I don’t know too many people who sit down and say, “Ok little Johnny you need to be afraid of spiders, they are going to eat you and kill you.” Or “Ok Susie we can not ever be off the ground because we will fall to our death and die.”  But kids are smart and most are very in tune with their parents when they are little.  And the fears we live become the reality they live.  Think about going to a relative’s home that you have a grudge or hard feelings toward.  Your kids know your norm.  They know when you are acting like yourself, when you are upset, tense or in a really good mood. So if you walk into your relative’s home, they feel your tension, they feel, mom or dad is tense, so I need to be on my guard.   So they are going to pick up on your feelings.  They will seem hesitant.  This may not be a bad thing if they need to be more on their guard.  Kids are amazingly intuitive, they know and feel what you feel.  Be aware of your own tension in relationships, it does form the foundation of their relationships.  

4. Purpose, not Perfection.  Another anxiety I see a lot in kids is a need to be perfect.  Sometimes this is overt in the relationships and sometimes kids have a bent toward perfectionism.  Does their room have to be perfect? Can you tolerate your stress so they can have toys out and play? Can a dish be left in the sink? Does everything have to be in order?  Purpose in our actions and not perfection is the key.  If I have a smaller home with no storage, we may need to be more organized with our things to have a functioning home.  I am a big fan of resetting the house in the evening so it is ready for the next day.  But there are some parents that things have to be perfect all the time.  The thought of a dish being left in the sink is overwhelming.  Or germs, someone may get sick so the parent lysol’s constantly.  The parent is overly anxious about cleaning and not living.  Again with any anxiety there needs to be balance. When I was growing up I babysat for one of these parents.  Everything in the home was perfect all the time.  The 3 yr old would get one box of toys out, play with them and put them back on the shelf before he could get out another one. Nothing was allowed to be out of place, and constantly had to pick up everything.  While organization is very important and a clean home is also key for all of us.  Like any anxiety, the goal is balance. Kids pick up on your anxieties and they become anxious if you are anxious.  Is it ok if they get a B? Can they have times they are in a bad mood? Your kids will pick up on is there a purpose behind the cleaning, or is it a need to be perfect?  Kids are not perfect, there are times they will be tired, or need a break or need to just hang out with you.  Be present. 100%.  Let the chores go every once in a while to just be with your kids.  They are your purpose, not the perfection of your home.

5. Are you enough?  You may be wondering why I would have this question in this article? It is one of our basic human fears.  Am I enough?  At the end of the day if you are not enough as a person, you will pass this fear on to your kiddo. Our fears, whether we see them or not, are seen by others.  It is our blind side.  This enough concept comes out in a lot of different ways.  Sometimes we work really hard in relationships to be accepted.  Sometimes we can’t say no to others so that we are liked.  Sometimes we go into our turtle shells and avoid the world around us.  There is an inner need to know that we are enough.  This question is answered in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  When he defines our value, who we are and our purpose.  We are always enough no matter what our circumstances are.  We don’t have to people please, work 60 hours a week or be at every family function.  We are enough just being a child of God.  Our value is in who he says we are not in how we perform.  This one principle reduces anxiety tremendously.  When our foundation is secure it reduces our overall anxiety.  When we question the foundation of who we are it can open all kinds of doors of insecurities, fears and anxiety that make us question fundamentally who we are. 

We don’t intentionally pass on fears and anxieties to our kiddos.  But we do. Not in a malicious way but we live out our fears and our kids have a front row seat to our lives. One of my favorite things to teach people is the emotional spaghetti strainer… From the ages of 18-25 years old we need to intentionally sift through our childhoods.  Keep what is important and let go of what you don’t want to hold or continue.  None of us had perfect parents.  Evaluate, what were the good things that you want to hold on to and what are the things that really need to be let go. If we all did this, our fears and anxieties would be significantly less.  Sometimes we are carrying more anxieties than we can handle.  Sometimes these fears are from a trauma that need to be processed and healed. But sometimes we pick up the emotional baggage that our parents left us and that their parents left them.  Let’s let that cycle end with us!!