Passing on Fears to Children
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I was reading a book this past summer on the brain. I wish I could remember the author, or even the title. I’m just not good at recall when it comes to details. If I do not have them written down, I’m likely to not ever be able to bring the information to the front of my thought process.
Anyway, there was one sentence in the book that said that most fears that a child develops come from the mother. It went on to say that sometimes it is not even intentional. The child just picks up on the mother’s fears and internalizes them.
I know I got my fear of snakes from my mother. She was always wildly irrational when she saw one. I first became aware of snakes as “bad” when I was very young. I must have been about 4 (my daughter’s age) and I was looking at a family medical book we had on a low shelf of the bookshelves in the living room. I could not read yet, so I was paging through and looking at the illustrations. There was a piece of white paper covering something in the book. I knew my mom had put it there. She had even taken the time to tape around all four sides.
Anyway, I carefully peeled back a corner and eventually removed the paper. Underneath was an illustration of a coiled up black snake. My little girl brain immediately told me snakes must be terrible if they needed to be covered like that.
I have tried my best to not pass my own fears along to my daughter, but she is just so tuned into who I am and what makes me tick. She is picking up on my fear of snakes. She also reacted with a lot of fear after an incident two days ago. I walked into the main bathroom and on the mirror was a VERY large white frog. He was massive. I have seen albino frogs out in the yard, but they are always tiny. They are not as cute once they become gigantic. I have no idea how he got into the house and al of the way to the bathroom – but there he was! My brain took several seconds to even be able to compute what it was. In context, I could not align that frog with my bathroom mirror and all I saw was this lump of moving shiny white stuff.
I screamed. When someone screams for 5 seconds, it can sound like forever. Finally, my mind figured out it was a frog and visually it was as though a white fog solidified into a frog before my eyes. It’s funny how the mind works.
Gigi has been terrified of the idea of a frog ever since then. She saw her mother scream, react with fear, and appear out of control of a situation. I am sure it put a mini phobia in to her head. Now I just have to figure out how to help her get over it.
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