What, Me Worry?

I have so much stored up I wanted to talk about from our trip, and Brian's outside with the kids, so I thought I'd grab a moment to write a second post today about visiting my mom.

While I was getting ready for the trip and worrying so much about how the kids would behave around my mom and what she would think of my parenting, it struck me that if I could sum up my one main problem with my mom, it would be, "She worries too much."  As a kid, I felt that somehow she thought I was never going to turn out right, that I wasn't going to be able to "function in the real world," to quote one of her oft-used phrases, in part because she worried about me so damn much. Once I had children, she worried about them and how I was raising them:  I was going to smoosh Bridger when we slept with him as a baby; I was making him too dependent on me because I carried him so much; I was going to tire myself out by giving so much to my kids (well, she was right on that last one, but all her worrying didn't actually prevent it from happening).  

I think my mother genuinely believes that worry is a measure of love; that of course a mother worries about her children.  But I have a worry of my own:  I believe when we mothers worry so much about our kids, we are sending them all sorts of messages, nonverbal and verbal, that don't help our kids to see themselves as capable and that don't help them learn to trust that things will usually work out all right in the end--or that they have what it takes to cope when things don't work out.  We also end up inadvertently insinuating ourselves in their heads as an undermining, fretful voice of doubt rather than an uplifting vote of confidence. 

I've been thinking about the idea of worry a lot in part because of a post about worry from one of my favorite bloggers, Tammy Takahashi.  She was writing about homeschooling, but I think what she has to say applies to anyone.  

"Worried you aren't doing enough?" she writes.  "You're giving up your power.  By worrying whether you are doing enough, you are saying, 'I'm powerless to control this thing.'. . . If you want back your power, don't worry about things, think about them."

There are all sorts of things I worry about in our homeschooling.  I worry that we don't get enough exercise and time outdoors, for instance.  I worry when Bridger is so hard on himself when he makes a mistake.  I worry that I'm not getting Cassidy together for one-on-one playdates with other little girls her age as much as she might like, and that I'm not giving her enough chances to do the crafty, artsy things I think she enjoys.  But when I shift to thinking instead of worrying, I stop going into defeatist mode and start looking for small steps I can take to help my children.  I stop fretting about failing and measuring up and tune in instead to what might actually work for us, right now, as we are.