The self-driven child - Chapter 4: The non-anxious presence

In addition to love, affection, managing your own stress is the best thing you can do to be an effective parent

Trickle-down Anxiety

• orchid children: particularly sensitive to the parenting they receive.
• epigenetics: the ways that experience affects genes by turning the function of specific genes on or off. While your children may be born with some genetic predisposition, it takes experiences to turn on the specific genes that ignite depression or anxiety
• Turning on these problematic genes to the "on" position can happen in two ways
• secondhand stress: stress is contagious. 
• Kids can feel your emotions even though you try to hide it.
• kids tend to be particularly bad at correctly interpreting what they are seeing. They always think their parents' negative emotions are due to something they do
• As kids experience more stress, their amygdala becomes larger and larger and more reactive. 
• Behavior: 
• social anxiety: you experience intense fear of being scrutinized and negatively evaluated by others in social situations. 
• Parents who suffer social anxiety tend to
• have difficulty communicating warmth and affection
• more critical and generally express more doubt about their children's abilities than less anxious parents do
• more apt to be overcontrolling and less likely to grant autonomy

Possible results of being an anxious presence

• Raise an anxious child by turning on specific genes that ignite depression or anxiety
• Kids will eventually avoid talking about their problems with you because home is no longer a safe base for them

How to be the nonanxious presence

• make enjoying your kids your top parenting priority
• your kids need to feel the joy of seeing your face light up when you see him because you are genuinely happy to spend time with them. The feeling is incredibly powerful and important for his self-esteem and sense of well-being
• find out why you are not enjoying your children. be true to yourself
• Don't' fear the future
• what makes it so stressful when our kids aren't' doing well is the "fear of getting stuck" - the fear that our kids will get locked into a negative place from which they won't be able to emerge
• but who your child is as now is not who she will always be. The prefrontal cortex continues to develop rapidly in adolescence and into early adulthood
• You worry constantly about the possibility that your child will fall into the small category of kids who chronically struggle, you are only making matter worse
• Commit to your own stress management
• transcendental meditation
• radical downtime
• exercise and get enough sleep
• Make peace with your worst fears
• ask yourself "what am I most afraid of?" and "what would I do"
• Adopt an attitude of nonjudgemental acceptance
• The common denominator in all emotional pain is a desire to change the current reality
• ACT: Acceptance, Choose, Take Action
• I accept the idea that my kid is underachieving, and I see this as part of his path
• I choose to create a vision of myself as a calm, compassionate parent who has a supportive relationship with my daughter
• I will Take action by offering to help, focusing on his strengths, setting limits where necessary, and modeling acceptance and self-care. I will also seek help from others if my child needs assistance such as tutors