Over the past year, it has become clear that my middle son, C., is carrying around a family heirloom of sorts: anxiety. Anxiety runs on both sides of the family and is something that both Husband and I have faced, to varying degrees and frequency, in our lives, so this is not surprising at all, really.
It just kind of breaks my heart.
I have written before about how we have worried about C. He is a dear, sweet, tenderhearted child. He is the one who wants to please us, mediate, make people okay. His letter to Santa this year listed the toys he wanted Santa to bring his big brother, with just an afterthought mention of what he wanted for himself, and it was signed, "Your little friend, C." My heart nearly exploded out of my chest with a mixture of pride, love, and an aching, searing jolt of pain at his vulnerability.
In so many ways, he is the child I worry about the most. He is the closet introvert who hides his social anxiety with jokes and class clownery. He is the artist who thinks his drawing stinks, the 100-pound second grader who wears a size 10-12 in boys' clothes and still needs a Pull-Up at night. He is the one who treasures little things like baking cookies with me and absolutely must be read to every single night or he cannot fall asleep.
And he is the one with the anxiety.
At the beginning of the school year, C.'s well-intentioned teacher crowded us both a little with her concern for C., who did not seem to be engaged in class and outright admitted he didn't enjoy school. She was convinced he was depressed. Not depressed, I tried to explain to her. Anxious. She did not seem to understand, listing his class clown status and his outgoing nature and how smart he is. Yes, he is smart, I confirmed, and yes, he is outgoing, but it is a mask to hide his social anxiety in a class where he knew only one child at the beginning of the school year. He just needed time to settle in, I explained.
After some rough starts, he did, and he is doing better. But he still struggles. He blows up at me if I ask him to do something he should have done already. He gets nervous if he thinks we will be late to a practice or a game. He dwells and works himself up before he starts something new -- a team or a class -- in which he might not know anyone or have an anchor.
I know a little about anxiety, but I know more about how it has affected people in my family. I have a gut feeling that my little guy is going to be dealing with anxiety his whole life. Unlike his cocky, self-assured brothers, he doubts. He worries. He isn't sure. And I can't fix it. I can get him help -- we plan on eventually starting him with someone to receive some cognitive behavioral therapy to learn better coping mechanisms, and we are trying to find ways to support him otherwise. But my feeling is, this is part of who he is, and it might always be part of who he is.
More than anything, I want to tell him all the reasons he should be just as cocky as his brothers. He's tall. He's smart. He works hard. He loves. He's a fabulous little artist. He has an amazing imagination. People like him. He's a playground leader and he uses his powers for good. He brings people together and builds other people up. He's such a good little guy. He's going to be such a wonderful big guy someday. He deserves to believe and know how wonderful he really is. And I just wish I could fix that. I wish that was in my toolbox of Mommy Powers. But it's not, really. I can do my best, and I can tell him and show him and support him and love him and give him everything I've got. But it's no guarantee of anything.
And that makes me anxious.
Get OVER it already.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
This week, my wonderful friend Lisa Belkin published an article written by the very funny Dawn Meehan over at Lisa's new Huffington Post blog. I would give you the name of Lisa's new HuffPo blog, but... uh... it is kind of in name limbo after the NY Times took unkindly to her calling it a similar name to her old NY Times parenting blog. Helloooo... someone didn't learn all he or she needed to learn in Kindergarten, NY TIMES.
Anyway, Dawn's article is about, unbelievably, the ridiculously belabored question of who has it "harder" -- the Stay at Home Mom (as you know, a term I recently dropped from my vocabulary) or the Working Mom?
Dawn is a talented writer and she makes me laugh. But seriously? Are we STILL talking about this? It's so... depressing. As I said in my recent post, we are all MOMS. I mean, do we have to have a winner of the Who Has It Worst question? This parenting stuff is, hands down, the hardest thing I have ever done. And I am not even talking about the crazy amounts of laundry that have to be put away, the constant dirty dishes, the cleaning of the bathrooms, the existence of pee absolutely EVERYWHERE in my life (will my house ever not smell like pee?). I'm talking about the emotional difficulty of being responsible for another little human's existence, character development, physical health and well-being, education, and, you know, FUTURE. Every single mother, no matter what her circumstance, has this burden. Some take it more seriously than others; some don't have the capacity to give it as much mental and emotional weight as others. But we all have hormones and we all gave birth or accepted a child into our hearts somehow, and when we did -- boom. HARD. NOT EASY.
You cannot shoebox a mother into a label. I have a good friend who is not working outside the home, but she is staying home with not one but TWO special needs children under the age of five. Her youngest might never really walk. She might never potty train. She might not have a normal life span. Her oldest is allergic to so many things that she cannot go to anyone's house who has ever owned a pet. She cannot come in contact with certain foods. So this mother's life at home is very isolated and very emotionally difficult. Are you going to tell me that someone else has it "harder" because she works outside the home?
I have been working from home this past year, and it definitely sucked for me. I am not great at that kind of multitasking, not great at drawing lines between working and mothering when it is all happening in the same room at the same time. That's me. Someone else might thrive on it -- it might be her lifeline. I don't care who has it harder. We're individuals, and we have individual kids with unique needs and obstacles and circumstances. Moms are married, divorced, single. They have children with special needs. They themselves might have special needs. Maybe they have spouses with special needs. We live in a sucky economy with sucky consequences for many families. Parenting is HARD -- for the rich, for the poor, for the working outside the home moms, for the moms not working outside the home. PARENTING IS HARD. That's why there there is no solution to the "who has it harder?" question. The answer is, we all do -- at any given moment, in any given situation, at any given age.
I would be a happy lady if I never saw another woman try to assert who has it "harder." Every time that sentence comes out of another woman's mouth or from another woman's keyboard, it's like some mom out there loses her wings. When will we stop trying to put stars on our bellies and start banding together? We could do so much good if we stopped arguing this question and started arguing about why we need better family policies in the American workplace, better health care, better maternity leave, better support for ALL mothers out there. It takes all of us to make up the village that needs to raise our children. Let's acknowledge that and MOVE THE HELL ON.
Anyway, Dawn's article is about, unbelievably, the ridiculously belabored question of who has it "harder" -- the Stay at Home Mom (as you know, a term I recently dropped from my vocabulary) or the Working Mom?
Dawn is a talented writer and she makes me laugh. But seriously? Are we STILL talking about this? It's so... depressing. As I said in my recent post, we are all MOMS. I mean, do we have to have a winner of the Who Has It Worst question? This parenting stuff is, hands down, the hardest thing I have ever done. And I am not even talking about the crazy amounts of laundry that have to be put away, the constant dirty dishes, the cleaning of the bathrooms, the existence of pee absolutely EVERYWHERE in my life (will my house ever not smell like pee?). I'm talking about the emotional difficulty of being responsible for another little human's existence, character development, physical health and well-being, education, and, you know, FUTURE. Every single mother, no matter what her circumstance, has this burden. Some take it more seriously than others; some don't have the capacity to give it as much mental and emotional weight as others. But we all have hormones and we all gave birth or accepted a child into our hearts somehow, and when we did -- boom. HARD. NOT EASY.
You cannot shoebox a mother into a label. I have a good friend who is not working outside the home, but she is staying home with not one but TWO special needs children under the age of five. Her youngest might never really walk. She might never potty train. She might not have a normal life span. Her oldest is allergic to so many things that she cannot go to anyone's house who has ever owned a pet. She cannot come in contact with certain foods. So this mother's life at home is very isolated and very emotionally difficult. Are you going to tell me that someone else has it "harder" because she works outside the home?
I have been working from home this past year, and it definitely sucked for me. I am not great at that kind of multitasking, not great at drawing lines between working and mothering when it is all happening in the same room at the same time. That's me. Someone else might thrive on it -- it might be her lifeline. I don't care who has it harder. We're individuals, and we have individual kids with unique needs and obstacles and circumstances. Moms are married, divorced, single. They have children with special needs. They themselves might have special needs. Maybe they have spouses with special needs. We live in a sucky economy with sucky consequences for many families. Parenting is HARD -- for the rich, for the poor, for the working outside the home moms, for the moms not working outside the home. PARENTING IS HARD. That's why there there is no solution to the "who has it harder?" question. The answer is, we all do -- at any given moment, in any given situation, at any given age.
I would be a happy lady if I never saw another woman try to assert who has it "harder." Every time that sentence comes out of another woman's mouth or from another woman's keyboard, it's like some mom out there loses her wings. When will we stop trying to put stars on our bellies and start banding together? We could do so much good if we stopped arguing this question and started arguing about why we need better family policies in the American workplace, better health care, better maternity leave, better support for ALL mothers out there. It takes all of us to make up the village that needs to raise our children. Let's acknowledge that and MOVE THE HELL ON.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)