About 68 percent of women and 57 percent of men with mental health problems are parents. When you give birth to a newborn baby, it’s an exciting and loving time. However, it’s also an extremely scary period filled with uncertainty and unknowns. These unknowns ultimately lead to parental anxiety and can cripple you from enjoying life with your newborn.
So, instead of worrying, it’s important to stress less about the success of your parenting and focus more on the time you have with your children.
What is Parental Anxiety?
Parents, particularly first-time parents are expected to feel anxious about their child. Psychologically, our brains are filled with a lot of parental stress during child-rearing activities. We’re constantly worried about our children’s future and behavioral issues such as bed wetting, temper tantrums, and picky eating. Studies also specifically show that parents in blended families are also more likely to experience anxiety and depression.
Therefore, if you have more than one kid or are part of a blended family, you may also be anxious about whether or not you’re spending enough time with each child and preventing any jealous feelings in the house.
Read also: How To Raise A Genius Child
These anxieties generally go away or get better over time, but it can feel as though you’re trapped and don’t know what to do.
The symptoms of parental anxiety include shortness of breath, panic attacks, high blood pressure, sleeplessness,nausea, and dizziness.
Impact of Parental Anxiety on Your Children
According to clinical studies, children with parents that experience intense parental anxiety are also more likely to develop anxiety issues throughout childhood and beyond.
Children with at least one parent that experienced parental anxiety are only 38.7 percent likely to be free of anxiety problems, while children with parents that did not have parental anxiety are 82.4 percent more likely not to have symptoms of anxiety issues. This shows that by coping with your own parental anxiety, you could pass on positive practices to your child and help them to build a stress-free future.
How to Cope with Parental Anxiety
The first step to coping with your anxiety is to remember that every parent feels the same way you do.
At some point in their parenting career, each and every mom and dad has stressed about their kid’s wellbeing and freaked
out over their parenting skills.
Read also: 4 Ways Parents Mentally Hurt Their Kids
To ease your anxiety attacks, find someone that you can confide in. Talk to your partner more about the things that
are stressing you and you’ll see that the parental anxiety will start to dissipate.
Having two people tackle parental stress makes you a lot stronger than taking it on alone. You should also take good care of yourself and eat well, exercise, get a good night’s sleep, and finding a new hobby to take your mind off your parenting. There is no magical eraser that will eliminate your anxieties, but you can find ways of coping with it.
If you feel as though you need professional help, you can also seek out a therapist to help come up with a specific anxiety plan for you.
Worrying about your kid is normal. However, as parents, we need to get away from the parental stress and find time for ourselves to breathe, relax, and enjoy time with our kids.
