Do you worry about your children constantly? How do you ever relax?

My Dd is 21 and I could have written your post. I just have to have faith that we brought her up as well as we could. We can't have control over everything.

I was thinking of this thread today. DD went off to school really unhappy this morning and I’ve basically felt on edge and not myself until picking her up (kids finish at lunchtime on a Friday where we live) Now she’s fine and I feel so great and excited for the weekend. That’s sort of what I meant upthread about only being as happy as my least happy child.

Now and then thoughts like this do cross my mind. I think the only way forward is to mitigate the risks as best you can (by being vigilant with small children, discussing dangers with older teens etc) and then accept that tragic accidents and events do still happen. If anything happened to one of my DC, it would be indescribably awful but at least I'd have the comfort of knowing that I'd tried the best I could as a parent to make the time we'd had together as full of love and fun as possible.

Mine are teens and I've worried since they were born. You can never relax. Constantly putting their happiness first and yes, your happiness depends on theirs. It can be overwhelming. The worry and relentlessness of looking after them is what makes parenting hard. Maybe the parents who don't worry or who manage to put themselves first find parenting easier and less relentless. Less worry =less work.

I’m a new mum and I’ve struggled with anxiety and mental health my whole life. I had anxiety through my whole pregnancy and since baby is here I have definitely worried about him every day.

BUT what I tell myself is that there are so many things out of our control and worrying about them isn’t going to stop things happening so they are a waste of energy and it doesn’t mean something bad will happen just because I think it will. for example worrying about your partner dying in a car accident every day on the way to work is just going to waste your energy that you could be using to be happy as you can’t control that (if that makes sense)

I know I will worry about him for the rest of my life but he is so amazing and the love I have for him is so much that it beats any anxiety I could feel.

I do worry all the time. I don't let it show, generally, but I'm a bag of anxiety morning noon and night. When I went back to work both times after mat leave, I would find myself clearly picturing them dying and their funerals as I drove in. I'd end up at work in floods of tears. Now i worry less about illness/injury and more about their future - the real risk of bullying, sexual assault, poor choices and peer pressure around drugs and alcohol and vaping, toxic online influencers, the state of the planet, them being lonely or ending up as anxious and exhausted as me.

Therapy? Lol 😂 I've had friends go to the gp for catastrophising issues and I've done therapy before baby planning and would probably go again.

Doesn't ever take away the anxiety but you can help manage it, don't think it makes you a shite parent.

I don't really worry about my dc unless there's something to worry about; if they're ill, for example, I'll be concerned but I don't sit there and imagine all the things that could possibly ever go wrong and think of how I can try to prevent or preempt them. That sounds exhausting.

I think anxiousness actually helps as you can preempt things that might be dangerous etc and fix them in advance to keep baby safe! I haven't been totally relaxed at all since my baby was born, but I have never been so in love with him. I feel ok when he's left in my parents care as I trust them completely, I'm quite nervous about nursery though!

My sister's 26 year old son died in a freak accident last year and it's made me so much more anxious about my 20 year old son when he's out and about. I've always worried if I'm honest but I'm much worse now. It's horrible.

This. I have teens and am very anxious right now - at times I have thought my mental health is worse because I am a parent. But - my kids have enriched my life so much, and have given me so much love and joy that it's a price I can pay.

This.

I am generally more of a worrier than dh, but I call myself a 'planner' rather than plain worrier. I only worry about the risks that I can reasonably mitigate and then plan around them, not the black swan risks. At the back of my mind, yeah, I worry that when my teenage son is out, he might get stabbed but I cannot lock him up, so he has to live his life and I mine.

i have PTSD from a horrendous pregnancy, traumatising covid c section experience then finding out my son had a birth defect after 6 weeks in hospital after birth. Part of my PTSD is hyper vigilance; I’m a lot better now but I still absolutely panic when he gets ill, especially since he had sepsis this past January. It doesn’t take much health wise to push me over the edge. It’s so draining. You love them so much, you just want to protect them at all costs.

I don't worry about my kids in general although there are times when I do but those times pass

I do worry about mine but what I think of as normal material worry about something happening out of the blue.

I have a good friend who once said (when I was worrying about them racing about like mad things on scooters) - look, they probably won’t break anything but even if they do, they’ll heal up. It did kind of help actually.

Were on an adventure holiday at the moment and I looked at mine this evening after the shower and they’re covered in bruises and scrapes from falling off a bike, bouncing off the side of various water slides, getting hit with a ball etc and when I said to them “do you know where you got those bruises from?!” they were like “oh yeah, no, I don’t even remember getting them”. They’re 12 and 10 by the way and have had their fair share of incidents!

I do worry when they’re ill but never that it’s something serious. In fact I’m the opposite and have left both of them too long before seeing the Dr as I don’t want to be “that parent” and was told that I really should have brought them in sooner (one had an eye infection that could have been very nasty and the other had a cold that turned into a chest infection).

If I think about all the scary things that could happen to them, it’s awful of course but I just squash those feelings down, lock them away like the good Brit I am.

I have teens/twentysomethings and the worry is definitely worse now than when they were little, and it seemed bad enough then. When they're still at home and at school, at least you have a high degree of control over what happens, when and with whom. Tbh, my best advice is to train them well in what things to share with you and what things it would be best that you just never know about.

I guess my question is more to do with the aspects of life we don't have any control over, mostly illnesses both physical and mental, and freak accidents and stuff like that.

In the same way that all of these awful things can happen to you, or your partner, or parent or sibling, but you don't think about them all the time. No point in worrying about what you can't control. Like for everything in life, you risk assess and minimise the risks and that is all you can do.

Same situation as @SarahLucSc , my first was stillborn and my son is now 4, and I had to have hypnotherapy because I catastrophise and constantly googling stuff which would all lead to him having cancer /dying. It was exhausting. I am much better since my therapy, know he just has a cold/virus etc but I do worry about everything else.. will he have friends, will he be nice, what will the world be like when he’s grown up, just all of it. It’s very stressful and I have crazy anxiety since having him. I just love him so so much I want his life to be perfect but I know that’s not real life.

I think you are showing fantastic foresight and I wish I had.

In my case I often barely cope. I don't switch off or properly relax. I'm undergoing assessment for ADHD and Autism. One of the big issues being that I've always been very inflexible and unable to cope with unexpected changes.

I spend so much effort trying to predict what the coming night might bring etc (illness in particular) because I need to run the scenarios and be ready for it if (when) it happens. The nights give me so much anxiety. Will they wake? Will they be ill? Am I going to wake up to need to clean up vomit from bedding and floors.

I never used to have an issue with vomiting until last year when we experienced our first stomach bug since having kids. It genuinely traumatised me. 😑

Mine are only 5, so I’m hardly an expert and have zero experience of teenagers etc.

So far, I’ve found that they just keep me far too busy to be worrying about things that might happen to them and pre kids I was riddled with life fear and worry. Watching them explore the world and being so brave inspires me to be brave and strong for them if that makes any sense? I’m trying to build a strong foundation with them that they are loved, they are worthy, and that I’m always here so when their life gets trickier as they age they know they’ve got security and boring old mum to come back to.

i hope to God they never get seriously ill or injured, but if they do I will be there. I will always be there and we will face whatever it is together. Mainly though I try not to think about the what ifs because it brings me out in a panic!

It does shock me when I think about it that I can’t protect these precious little people I made from the harshness of life and that really, the only thing I’ve got is to hope and pray that they’re lucky in life. I’m going to have to stop thinking about it now, because I’m starting to fret and my whole body is screaming to go wrap them in cotton wool and use my body as a human shield for them against my imaginary horrors 😂

@Glitterbiscuits sounds like we are on the same page

Same but then I've never been an anxious person. If someone is prone to severe anxiety then I can see how it might be easy to direct that towards their children but it's not good for anyone imo.

I am prone to anxiety, and I found it easier once my DC was older than a year old and was out of the high cot death risk age range.

Also, this was about the age that they started walking and bumping into everything, so it became impossible to freak out about every little bump.

Having kids definelty made ne sweat the small stuff a lot less. I'm an overthinker and can get anxious at times, but I never worry about massive things happening to my kids as the day to day of parenting fills my whole head. There's just no room (for me) for the big worries.

I have diagnosed anxiety as well as PTSD which comes with hyper vigilance and I have found that, much to my surprise, I don't tend to worry about DS much at all. Or at least, I worry in a normal way.