Anxious Child?

I'm pretty sure that every decent parent worries that they're somehow screwing up their children.

There's no such thing as a perfect parent and therefore no such thing as a perfect childhood. 

I absolutely know that Reid and I are trying our best, that we struggle to be patient even though we know it's unhelpful to be reactive. We shower our little boy with so much love though, and I have to hope against hope that this will be enough to help guide him as he grows and I hope he can always talk to us about the things he's going through. I know he's only little, he has so much growing and developing to do, but when things play on my mind, I just have to write about them - get it all out so I can try to look at things from a different perspective.

Isaac has had a big year since turning three, and I was warned by lots of people that this was going to be a tough year as far as toddler antics, big emotions, lots of curiosity and rapid brain development.

I don't know if it's because I have anxiety myself that I am more finely tuned to noticing anxious behaviour, but I am so terrified that Isaac might struggle with it. I obviously have no medical authority on the subject, am not at the point where I think he needs specialist intervention or anything like that, but there are things that definitely worry me when I see all the things that worry him. 

I am a confusingly loud introvert (I believe I heard this phrase originally from Em Rusciano). I am definitely not, nor have I ever been shy, I can talk to almost anyone and am not necessarily uncomfortable in social situations because I feel awkward, but more because I find it so draining. I am an empath and soak up other people's emotions like a human sponge. I feel so very deeply, I get caught up in other people's pain, taking it on as my own and often spending days at a time trying to move past a sad story or knowledge of a traumatic event - it's not an easy personality trait to deal with and its 100% necessary for me to have alone time and down time to be able to function at least semi-normally. I think Isaac is going to be the same. He is often excited at the thought of seeing his friends/family but will often ask to go home if things are too loud/emotional/overwhelming. He talks a lot about his feelings and will ask Reid and I "are you sad?" "are you happy?" "are you a little bit happy?" We have focussed a lot on talking about feelings to try to help him (and us) understand some of his behaviour. At the moment, (I assume because he's only three), I don't see a lot of empathetic behaviour in other ways from him haha, but he is definitely really sensitive to mine and Reid's moods and is so easily overwhelmed in social situations and does take some time to recover from them and return to his normal chatty self. 

We attended a birthday party for one of his friends that he was looking forward to for weeks. He talked about it a lot and was so excited. When we got there, he was immediately terrified. He didn't leave mine or Reid's side and didn't play with any of his friends. There were definitely a lot of people there, a lot of children as well as a lot of adults and some kids are definitely slower to warm to those kind of situations, but from what I noticed, they did eventually warm up and participate in the games and play with the bikes and toys etc, but not Isaac. He clung to us, would only play with us and panicked completely if one of us were out of his sight. Lots of his friends tried to engage him in play, but he wouldn't even look or speak to them, let alone play with them. On the way home he said he didn't like birthday parties but that he wished he had played with some of his friends. He was fairly sad about it for a while. We tried to encourage him to play, we certainly weren't pushy about it, I don't believe in that strategy whatsoever, and we offered to go with him to join in with pass the parcel etc, but he was not having a bar of it. 

He is hating childcare. He is so sad when Reid drops him off and spends a lot of the morning begging not to have to go. This is obviously heart breaking for Reid and I but we don't exactly have a choice about sending him with our work schedules. He is so easily overwhelmed and overtired and it is such a long day for him there. I've considered looking into family day care and other alternatives, but we haven't found anything that fits with what we want/need at this stage. He used to really like going, but since moving up to a room where the ages of the children are 3-5 year olds, I think he feels a bit intimidated and out of his comfort zone. His educators have made fairly consistent comments about him being quiet and reserved a lot of the time lately, (which didn't use to be the case), and often appearing sad. He carries his teddy around most of the time there, and although he is well liked and his friends often rush to him in the mornings, he takes a while to settle in and Reid struggles leaving him there. 

He is incredibly ritualistic and loses his mind if things don't go the way he wants/needs them to. He lines up his toy cars and trucks methodically and if one gets moved out of place he cannot handle it at all. If someone else touches one of the cars then all hell breaks loose! His absolute favourite thing to do is dig with his outside trucks. He puts loads of dirt in his dump truck, then transports it to make a pile - and repeat - for hours. He isn't often imaginative in his play at home, and definitely struggles with independent play (he is happy to dig by himself but after a while "Mummy/Daddy can you please dig with me?? Just for a little while?") He struggles hugely without his bedtime routine. If he doesn't have sufficient time to wind down then it's basically a guarantee that he will have a rough night. No matter how hard we work on his sleep habits, he is consistently wakeful and needs support to sleep. It's taken me three years but I am slowly coming to terms with this and am mostly enjoying the late night snuggles and I absolutely understand that the sleep stuff won't last forever. I also want him to know that he is safe and secure and able to sleep on his own though, and my heart and brain are constantly at war over this, particularly with the knowledge I have from our family/sleep therapist. It's all just too hard on my Mama heart. I just know that sleep is so important and impacts people in so many different ways as they grow up.

I have lots of examples, lots of things I could share, lots of obsessive worries I could detail, but I know that at the end of the day, if Isaac does end up struggling with anxiety, I am in the best possible position to help him. I will never, ever belittle him for being afraid. I will never, ever call him a sook. I will never, ever try to crush his sensitivity or his emotions and I will never, ever make him feel ashamed about things he cannot control. Even knowing these things though, the horrible voices in the back of my mind are being a bit noisy at the minute, hence this post I guess. So easily I feel like he could be this way because of me. I blame myself for every little thing, every struggle he has, every possible sign of any issue I attribute to either something I am, or something I've done. My heart aches at the thought of him struggling, I want him to thrive and be confident in who he is. I want the world to see him how we see him. I want him to know that no matter what, he is perfect to me.