At the beginning of third grade my oldest had a panic attack. It was textbook—she felt like she couldn’t breathe, she swore up and down that she was going to die, and she was sure her heart had stopped beating.
I took her to the pediatrician, who gave her a clean bill of health. I contacted her school counselor. After a therapy session with my daughter, she had some coping mechanisms to fall back on, but the worry remained. Worry about things that will never happen and worry about things that might happen. Worrying about death, school, friends. Sometimes she would give me a deep sense of fear, like she would lose a tooth and swallow it in her sleep. She was convinced that just moving her head on the pillow would be enough to pull an entire tooth out of her gums.
While part of me wants to tell her to stop being so ridiculous and say “of course that’ll never happen”, the truth is I get it ——I was also worried when I was a child. And my imagination has always been very active. I once heard my elders I had my sister’s pager vibrating on the bookshelf in her room when I was home alone (yes, this was the 90s) and convinced myself it was a murderer using her pencil sharpener.
All these years later, it turns out that I can use all of these extremely vivid mental images to my advantage as a parent: Being someone with an overactive imagination makes me a very patient mom with my kids’ anxieties. Because what do you know? maybe there is yes Something made a noise at the window.
Of course I wouldn’t tell her that. I’m not going to tell her, “Oh my gosh, maybe yes There’s a ghost in these walls” (even I believe in the paranormal). I just listened to what she had to say. I heard her worry and worry and stress and I said, “You know what? I get it. I understand why you’re worried about this. But that’s why I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
I can give her real information that she currently doesn’t know. I could open the curtains and let her see the branches hitting the glass. I could teach her about the structure of a house and why it sometimes creaks and groans. I could assure her over and over again that even adults can be afraid of the dentist and sometimes it’s just something you have to do and know it’s going to be okay on the other side.
My overactive imagination is still there. Sometimes I have to go into their bedroom in the middle of the night and make sure they’re still asleep in their bed, because what if someone catches them within 10 minutes of me taking a shower? Sometimes I have to convince myself at 3am that the truck I hear driving down the street is not a buyback truck because our minivan is not behind on payments. I still cut grapes into quarters when my 5 year old brings them to school because what if she gets distracted at the lunch table and chokes?
Some concerns are valid and rooted in experience and research. Some fears are just stories you tell in your head because you once read something scary, or a random thought pops into your head so hard that now you’re convinced it’s not the brain doing brain things , but a sign, a portent, a prediction. Sometimes you watch so much Robert Stark as a kid that you have to put aside years of worries.
But it all makes me a better mom. Because I know exactly how my daughter feels when she says she’s afraid she’ll fail fourth grade. As much as I want to shake her and say, “Oh my gosh, you really got all A’s, you just got a near-perfect score on your milestone test, and no teacher has ever told me they were worried about you,” I can just hold her, Reassure her. I get it.
Life is terrible. Everything feels uncertain. When you’re 10 years old, you haven’t experienced the years when everything is okay. You only have a small part of your life – and a lot of imagination.
Samantha Darby is the Senior Lifestyle Editor of Romper and Scary Mommy, a PTA Soccer Mom, and raising three little women with her husband in suburban Georgia. Her pickup truck was always being totaled.
