Passing fears onto our children

Thanks Flowergirl,

I understand what you're feeling, I am afraid of everything and anything. Am just glad that my father never put an inhibition on me doing certain things because I am girl, only girl in a family of 5. My brothers told me video games were not for girls, my whole childhood, and trust me, I just suck at it .

I posted some weeks back how my fear could eventually prevent my child from exploring her environment and you are so right. The more I say no, the more i see my 11 months old hesitating before doing something, eventhough in the end she still does it anyway, I realised that the more I inhibit her, the more scared she will be.

So I have decided not to do what my mother did with us, and let the child explore, and hold my tongue back sometimes and only prevent her from doing extremely dangerous things which at this stage is going up the stairs

Interesting topic and you've got me thinking. It's so difficult to find a balance in wanting to protect our children and keep them safe, but at the same time not wanting to make them afraid of living life.

With regards to how our mothers can influence our expectations of childbirth, my mother always made it out to be easy and no big deal (she had 3 natural births). She said labour pains aren't that much worse than bad period pains and this probably had a big influence on me choosing natural. I remember, after about 6 hours of labour (and just before shouting at the nurse to get me a f&%#ing epidural NOW!) thinking that my mother had down-played it a little! This is not to make you more afraid of natural birth, if all else fails epidural makes it painless.

Thanks, I'll give this some thought and see if there are any fears that I could be passing on to my LB.

Just thought this might make an interesting topic.

I am trying to be really careful not to pass my own hang-ups and fears onto EMily and I have just realised how easy it is to do this!

My niece is scared of everything and yesterday while playing at bugz, my sister and I realised that actually she is to blame for most of it. She wanted to go on horse swings and my sister kept saying: "are you sure? they can't stop it once you on, if you get scared, you'll have to stay on until it is finish". So, while her intentions were good, needless to say, the child changed her mind immediately. Then we were playing on the spinning circle and my sister screamed: "Be careful, you can't spin it, your aunty has to!" and I had to tell her, your child has been doing that herself for the past 15 minutes. So without realising it, she could be the cause of her child being soooooo afraid of EVERYTHING!!!

And then, I have just realised that maybe my mom is the reason that I am petrified of natural birth because for as long as I can remember she has been telling me how I will NEVER be able to cope with labour!!

I am ridiculously uncomfortable with nudity - I cannot be naked around anyone, not even my mom or my sister. And I get extremely uncomfortable when someone else is naked around me (locker rooms are my worst nightmare). I have no idea why and I am already thinking of how I am not going to pass this onto Emily

Anyone else have issues that they are trying not to pass onto their kids??