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Parents Dealing with Worry and Fear

by Lawrence Vijay Girard

Dear Vijay,

I worry about not being a good parent. My daughter Tracy is six and my son Michael is four. They seem happy. Our family does things together. It is just that with so much that seems to be going wrong in world, I fear that something will go wrong at home.

Hope you can help me, M.J.

Dear M.J.,

This really isn’t a parenting question. It is a question about your own self and how you relate to life. Your children are simply catalyst for energizing these issues for you. The fact that your feelings of unrest are manifesting in guise of concern for your children just proves that negative energies don’t play fair. They go for our soft spots, and they have no mercy.

You told me your story perfectly. But, you only needed to use two of words you wrote: Worry and Fear. These are words that become self-fulfilling. The more you use them, more powerful they become.

Whenever you have reoccurring feelings or emotions that get in way of your personal sense of internal balance you are doing yourself and your whole family a favor by doing something to improve your mental/emotional landscape.

You have taken first big step by recognizing that this area of your life is out of balance. Observation is key to knowing what is going on in life. Next you want to come up with creative solutions to your situation. Remember, you aren’t trying to go to war with yourself over this issue. What you are trying to do is redirect energy that is heading in what you would consider to be a negative direction, and turn it towards a positive direction.

Here is an idea to show you how this works:

Despite title of this article, I do not really think that we are all guilty of worshiping god of underworld. I am, however, quite turned off by amount of affection and devotion we give to unworthy television. Last week I was teaching a class of four year olds, and before lesson began, one of children informed me that she had to leave early so she could get home in time for American Idol. As a society, I’m afraid we truly have made television an idol – and not just an American one. Studies disagree on how much we watch per week; studies agree that we watch too much.

My husband I refuse to give others remote control of our home, and have taken several steps to channel our boys away from seductive and addictive influence of television. We thank major networks for loaning us their initials to broadcast our system to you:

CBS – Cut Box on Schooldays. Consider taking extreme position of not allowing television on weekdays. This has earned us title of ‘most unreasonable parents in school’, but we wear it with pride. To soften our image, we allow television freedom on weekends, after chores and homework.