Anxiety

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about my son and what’s going on with him for some time now.   The post hasn’t happened and at this point I’m going to have to break it up into several posts somewhat like chapters.   So let’s call today’s post, Chapter One: Anxiety.  (My son’s anxiety, mine is an altogether different topic.)

To start, there isn’t anything wrong with my son.   He’s going through some challenging times, perhaps based on the changes in our family due to his sister’s vision impairment, or maybe it’s because of our parenting style or it could just be because his brain is developing in some ways faster while in other ways slower.   It’s probably a combination of all three plus some other reasons I haven’t thought of.

My son is exhibiting what I would have called defiance or control issues a few months ago.   But after working with his therapist, we’ve come to realize it’s almost the complete opposite situation manifesting in what looks like controlling behavior.  

My son doesn’t have the executive function skills for manipulation and control yet, so in a situation where he feels out of control and his anxiety spikes, he tries to control his surroundings in an attempt to get his anxiety back under control.   Here’s an example:  my son came up late from bruising his teeth.   He saw the story book open in my lap and his sister in her bed and thought I’d started reading without him.   He got very upset and demanded he be allowed to wear his dinosaur slippers to bed.   He’s never wanted to wear slippers to bed and it was an almost palpable change in his demeanor as his demands and pleas to get the slippers got more extreme.  His complaints went on so long he almost lost the chance to hear a story (what he’d wanted in the first place).

This looked like a control issue as in him wanting to control what we allowed as parents.   Had I understood then what I do now, I could have handled the situation differently and I think the result would have been a quicker resolution and he would have felt better as well.   I didn’t let him have the slippers, but I didn’t validate how he was feeling and reassure him.   I should have told him I could see he was upset, but I didn’t start reading without him.  We were waiting for him and when he was in his bed and quiet, the story would begin.   I also could have told him, “the slippers won’t make you feel better” because he doesn’t really understand what he’s doing when he’s trying to control his environment and then reassure him we were waiting for him.

The above “better response” was what his therapist suggested when I talked to her about it and gave me more details on types of situations that might cause similar anxiety.   She said he has a need to be validated has a big fear of being rejected.   Dovetail that in with his low self-esteem and he can easily get thrown off and get into high-anxiety mode.

On the positive side from the observations from his therapist, my son had good impulse control, excellent problem solving abilities and wants to please people and make them happy.   He doesn’t always succeed in the pleasing people and making them happy because of other things in play, but underlying his anxiety, that’s how he really feels.

The Big Boy Update:   My son was watching clips from the Avengers movie with my husband this afternoon.   There are lots of superheroes in the movie and my son was watching with rapt attention.   When one video had finished he turned to my husband and said, “I love it when they pose.”   I’d never thought about it before, but superheroes do indeed do a lot of posing.   If posing skills are important to becoming a superhero, my son’s leveled posing to at least level ten in our living room alone.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to tell my husband and me a joke this morning.   Let me let you guess if she made it up herself:  “Why did the pig go to market?  Because he wanted to pick up a doughnut!”   <Insert laughing and giggling on the part of the joke teller here>