It is the job of children to scare the hell out of their parents. It's the job of parents to spare their children their fear. There is no such thing as not being a scared parent.
Just yesterday an anxious, pregnant mommy asked me what to read to prepare for her baby. I told her she did not need to know a thing about how to parent, she just needed to to her best to manage her own fears. In response to her confused look I added, "because when you are not afraid you are present and intelligent. You will have the presence of mind to know just how to respond to your child in the moment, no matter what the age of your child. You will have access to your own common sense".
When we get afraid we don't think well. We lose our perspective. We become reactive and impulsive. We lose our common sense.
Thus, it could be said that parenting comes down to simply one task. Managing our fears. Having said this, you might now fear not managing your fears. Let me reassure you. It is not about managing our fears perfectly. It is not even about managing our fears well. It is about managing our fears just well-enough. There is nothing wrong with being a scared parent.
As I struggle day to day to spare my daughter my fear I fail a thousand times. Yet, as D.W. Winnicott put it, "love is not about never failing. It is about failing a thousand times, recognizing the failure and making a reparations." I recall the terror when my wife started spotting during her pregnancy.
I recall, not only the awe and excitement, but the dread at my daughter's birth. Then there was my fear of crib death. And when she started crawling around, so much could go wrong....When my daughter got to13... what about sex, profanity, crime and drugs? I'll never forget the fist time she drove alone.
IT IS SCARY TO HAVE KIDS. We could lose them at any time, or something could happen to them at any time. They are vulnerable and there is nothing we can do about it beyond ordinary awareness and care. Being a scared parent is the most natural thing in the world.
Why do I say that it the parent's job to spare our kids our fear? Is it not obvious? Maybe if I point to our kids when they are infants and toddlers it becomes obvious - our fear, taken out on our kids, scares and burdens them. Isn't it our place as parents to help our kids with their fears and not turn to them for help with our fears?
The best help I have found with my fear of losing my daughter or of harm coming to her is to come to terms with the fact that it could happen. It has happened to countless numbers parents across the centuries. It continues to happen today. How do they deal with it? How do they get through it? I have no idea, but I see that they do. Some better than others. Some even well.
There seems to be something deep in the human spirit that allows us to come to terms and even grow from our greatest tragedies and catastrophes. With time, over the long term, people can adjust, can find new meaning, and can even find meaning in their child's harm or death. It seems to be at the foundation of our nature, of all nature to recover and get well.
You can thank your children for doing so well at their job giving you the chance of learning how to manage your fears so you can work at sparing them. Being a parent is being a scared parent.
Happy Parenting.
; 
