Pregnancy is a period of constant physical changes. But it also has a strong impact on a woman psychologically. And therefore, one of the most important tasks of expectant mothers is reducing anxiety.
Due to the many physical and hormonal changes, it is normal for pregnant women to experience anxiety from time to time. Anxiety is a normal emotion that comes to the fore when you are faced with something scary and threatening. In other words, it is an excessive and uncontrollable form of worry. When it comes to pregnancy, concerns are often related to your own health and the health of your baby.
But when this worry becomes irrational and frequent, and negative thoughts appear in the head constantly, we are dealing with an anxiety disorder.
Causes of anxiety during pregnancy
Symptoms of anxiety in the prenatal phase can be very diverse and depend on the individual characteristics of each woman. As for the reasons, it is obvious that the very fact of pregnancy is a reason that justifies the feeling of anxiety!
There are also three specific factors that can lead to excessive anxiety during pregnancy:
- fear of childbirth
- preoccupation with one's physical fitness
- fear of giving birth to a sick or disabled child
Additionally, anxiety during pregnancy is particularly common and severe in women who:
- experienced a miscarriage
- experienced stress before pregnancy
- struggled with infertility
- are among pregnant women at increased risk
“Fear sharpens the senses, anxiety paralyzes them.”
Kurt Goldstein
How to stop worrying about your child when leaving him in kindergarten
Write a list of all your friends, big and small, who went to kindergarten. I'm willing to bet that my hand will get tired before I run out of examples. If so many people attended the kindergarten, then it is unlikely that this place can be considered extremely dangerous.
Think about what could happen to your child there?
● He will remain hungry if he doesn't like the food.
It’s okay, even if you don’t want the main course, you can fill it up with bread. At home in the evening I will eat more. One way or another, all children attending kindergarten grow, develop, and gain weight. I have not heard of cases of dystrophy or anorexia that began in a child after going to kindergarten.
● The baby will wet himself, crap himself and will walk around in dirty pants.
If it does, it will be no longer than at home before discovery. There are spare clothes to change. Be sure to change your clothes, because a child in dirty pants spreads a specific smell throughout the group. No one - neither the teacher nor the nanny, if not to the baby, then certainly to the smell, will definitely remain indifferent.
● The baby will fall and hurt himself.
Maybe. But he is not immune from this even at home. Serezha was in my group. The boy is a disaster, giving me an obsessive desire to constantly hold his hand. As soon as we let him go, he immediately climbed a tree, a fence, or the roof of a house. He did not walk - he only ran, stumbled, stumbled, fell, earning himself abrasions and bumps. One morning my mother looked into the group and, before introducing Seryozha, warned: “Just don’t be scared!” A black eye, a bump on the forehead, a scab on the nose, a swollen lip. "What happened to you?" - “I decided to climb onto the closet and dropped it on myself.” I remembered how I took Seryozha off the closet. But in the kindergarten, the cabinets are securely fixed - screwed to the wall and to the floor to avoid such cases. In this sense, a kindergarten is less dangerous than an apartment. There may be falls, but no one anywhere is safe from this.
● Other children may hurt you.
They can. But this is experience. School of Communication. If this experience is not available in kindergarten, then the child will have to learn the basics of communicating with peers in a group of children at school.
● The teacher may offend.
Parents are frightened by information coming from the media about atrocities in kindergartens. About how children are beaten, punished, cursed. Maybe this really happened in one of the kindergartens of some city in our vast Motherland. Mostly, normal educators work with children who love children and their work. I have many friends who work in both municipal and private kindergartens. If they can spank a child, then only their own.
Play kindergarten at home: the child will be happy to play out all the regime moments, all the acute conflict situations, if there were any. And you will hear the teacher’s characteristic phrases. In a similar game, from my son in the role of a teacher, I heard the phrases: “Who did I tell?”, “Who else doesn’t hear me?!”, “I’m speaking to you in Russian!” - nothing criminal.
!!!
It is better to draw conclusions based on the game, analyzing indirect information. And always double-check your hypotheses. Direct information coming from the child may not be true. May be fantasy, manipulation or misinterpretation.
We often hear parents complain about the horrors happening in kindergarten, which their child tells them about.
I will give some examples to explain that the information should be taken into account, but be sure to double-check.
– We didn’t have dinner today. There's no food left in the kindergarten
– three-year-old Arseny told me with a sigh.
I didn’t panic and didn’t run to call the district department of public education with a complaint. Because I work in this kindergarten myself and know what was for dinner. The child was just joking.
– We drank wine in the kindergarten today!
– said four-year-old Arseny.
In the kindergarten on Monday they gave a cherry drink. And Seryozha’s dad had a birthday the day before. Seryozha immediately associated the red drink in a glass cup with recent life experience, told everyone that it was wine, and taught him to “clink glasses.” And Arseny sincerely believed that this delicious juice was called “wine”.
– They gave us worms for breakfast!
– Arseny told me in all seriousness when he was two years old.
Of course, I understand that this cannot be, but I’m curious where the child got this from?
I ask the teacher what they had in the group that day that had to do with worms. The teacher said: “I fed the catfish in the aquarium raspberries. I showed and told the children that fish also have breakfast.”
– The teacher threw sandals at me!
This is what I got into... I had to explain to my parents how after a quiet hour, holding the crap-crapped Maximka with one hand, I threw sandals to Nastya’s bed with the other hand so that she would quickly put on her shoes and not run to the toilet barefoot.
– I sat there punished all day!
“All day” is exactly 10 minutes. Enough to think about life and your behavior. In the perception of a bored child, this is a very long time, almost like the whole day.
- And my mother beat and beat me, threw me off the sofa -
says three-year-old Artem.
Did you think that children only tell horror stories about kindergarten at home? They also tell the teacher about their parents. In fact, Artyom’s mother is blowing away specks of dust. As it turned out later, Artyom had such a dream.
“Dad and I went to where everyone was fighting and drinking!”
– Ruslan shares his impressions of the weekend.
Are you scared? Ruslan's dad is a wrestling coach. The training room is hot and people drink a lot of water during training.
On this occasion, in one kindergarten I even saw a humorous announcement: “Dear parents, please do not believe everything your child says about kindergarten. In turn, we promise not to believe everything the child tells about you.”
The line between fiction and truth is very blurry for a small child. He composed something, or once saw a dream and accepted it as reality, or interpreted the event in his own way. But you shouldn’t completely ignore the children’s words either. The information received must be verified. Gently ask the teacher what the child’s words may be related to, and where he got it from. And when telling a child’s story, you should always carefully monitor the child’s emotions. The real emotion of resentment and fear does not arise from fictitious stories.
Two-year-old Syoma, my friend’s son, came home from kindergarten and greatly alarmed his parents by starting an unusual game. He dumped all the toys in the corner, and then began to whip them with his father's belt.
The mother immediately rushed to examine the child to see if there were any signs of beatings on the body, suggesting that he was acting out what actually happened. My imagination was already painting a terrible picture of the teacher yelling and waving his belt. Otherwise, where did the corner and the belt come from in the baby’s picture of the world, if Sema was never punished at home?
Clutching her heart, my mother started calling me asking where to go now and who to write a complaint to. Prosecutor's office? Rayono? But there are no signs of beatings on the child. It is useless to ask Sema. The child does not yet speak in coherent sentences, but also has the habit of answering “Yes” to any questions. I advised him to wait and see in what mood Syoma went to kindergarten the next day. Pay attention to what emotion will arise when he meets the teacher: he will want to hide, run away, or easily make contact. Tell the teacher about the child’s strange game, ask what could be connected with such an unusual plot.
Syoma went to kindergarten reluctantly, however, as always. But the child did not have any special reaction to the teacher. When the parents asked where this game came from, the teacher offered to join the group. There the boy Seryozha was whipping toys piled into a corner with a jump rope... “Just today I was going to ask Seryozha’s mother why Seryozha has been playing like this for the second day now.”
Some mothers are also afraid that the child will not like it in kindergarten and will cry. No matter how strange it may sound, crying during adaptation is the norm. Unless, of course, it lasts all day. The child needs time and the opportunity to “grieve”, to experience the loss of some of the pleasures of home life. Only after this will he be able to appreciate the beauty of kindergarten life. At first, it is very likely that the child will not like it in kindergarten. But here it is reasonable to ask the question of expediency. Are you sending your child to kindergarten because he likes it or is there a need? And if you don’t like it, then what? Will mom quit her job?
There is no benefit from worrying: “Oh, he doesn’t like it there.”
It is better to turn off emotions and turn on rational thinking. What exactly do you not like? Can we change this? If not, how can you change the child’s attitude towards this? It doesn't happen that you don't like the kindergarten at all. There is always something you like, or at least arouses interest, and something you don’t like. Clarifying these details promotes rapid adaptation. You can rely on what you like. You can work with what you don't like.
The simplest example: the boy Andryusha liked the girl Yulia and did not like the boy Seva, because Seva had the habit of painfully pinching the person sitting next to him. Having found out this, they “moved” Andryusha’s things to another locker. Now, getting dressed for a walk, Andryusha sat next to Yulia, far from Seva. The boy's life got better. It became especially interesting to go to kindergarten after dad came up with the idea of bringing Yulia flowers. Andryusha carefully carried the dandelion he picked on the way to kindergarten to kindergarten and left it in Yulia’s locker. Yulia will come to the kindergarten, open the locker, and there will be a surprise. And while Andryusha and dad were discussing and acting out the emotions that Yulia would experience at the sight of a surprise, dad quickly changed Andryusha’s clothes and sent him to the group.
Relaxation exercises
Relaxation is very helpful in reducing anxiety during pregnancy and also in preventing the recurrence of these symptoms after childbirth. In addition, relaxation exercises help you learn to breathe properly and stay calm, which is very important during childbirth.
Here are just a few of their advantages:
- Lower blood pressure
- Improved breathing and heart rate
- Reduced muscle tension
- Strengthening the immune system
Practice moderate physical activity
Experts recommend physical activity during pregnancy, provided that the activity is moderate. In most cases, these physical exercises can be performed during pregnancy:
- Walking
Exercises with a professional instructor, for example:
- Gymnastics
- Yoga
- Pool exercises
“Lack of activity destroys any human body, but movement and regular exercise save and preserve it.”
Plato
Learned fear
Children take everything at face value. And if there is a certain Baba Yaga somewhere, then one day the horror story dropped: “Now Baba Yaga will fly in and take you away if you don’t listen.” A seemingly harmless phrase is firmly imprinted in the child’s mind, reinforced by wild imagination. There is no Baba Yaga, but the feeling that a hunchbacked woman with a long nose and bony fingers is walking somewhere remains.
Gradually, fears accumulate, and if by the age of two the child acquires a fear of punishment, then by the age of 3-5 he becomes acquainted with the whole great three: loneliness, darkness and confined space.
All three fears are directly related to such harmless punishment as being locked in a closet or alone in a dark room. For some sensitive children, being placed in a corner, facing a wall, can even have this effect!
According to experts, the only thing that has a more destructive effect on a child’s psyche is regular beating. You need to have certain sadistic tendencies to lock your child in a dark room, where he is left alone with all the horror stories and tears. And who punished? The dearest and closest person in the whole world!
claustrophobia arises - the fear of closed spaces. Literally every third child suffers from this painful disease. Moreover, in most cases, this phobia does not disappear with growing up, but rather spreads wider than just the fear of riding in an elevator. The reason is still the same, punishment by being locked in a closet.
Next, the fear of the dark is nyctophobia . Chulan perfectly instills this fear, which penetrates deep into the subconscious and can manifest itself even in adulthood. And, of course, loneliness. The child cannot regard punishment with the “closet” as a way to change. For him, the closet is a test of fear every second! He was left alone, in the dark, with no way out. It is unlikely that such punishment can bring any benefit, but can easily cause harm.
Pathological fear of loneliness - autophobia , even more dangerous and destructive. It haunts your whole life and manifests itself in a variety of situations: to get married or marry anyone, just not to be alone; get 20 cats; work at any job; be afraid that you will be abandoned, etc.
Seek help from a specialist
Anxiety, if persistent, may be a clinical disorder. Then her symptoms are very exhausting, obsessive and irrational.
If you suffer from excessive anxiety, then it is best to contact a specialist who will provide you with the necessary support and tell you how to most effectively overcome bad thoughts and protect your child from your nervous breakdowns.
Because scientific research shows that maternal stress and anxiety can have a negative impact on a child's mental health and development.
Those. The health of your baby directly depends on your condition and well-being during pregnancy.
In a word, do not forget to take care of yourself not only physically, but also psychologically. Then you will avoid many possible problems. Good luck, wisdom and peace of mind!
Root causes of overprotection
If you understand the essence of the problem, you see that excessive worry about your child is destroying your life and his, this is already a positive trend.
Now you need to delve into yourself to understand why you behave this way. Among the initial reasons for excessive guardianship are the following:
- own childhood fears;
- past loss of a child;
- late birth;
- problems in family life;
- diffidence.
Our behavior with children is often influenced by our own memories from the past..
If the baby’s mother was afraid of dogs in childhood, now she transfers these fears to her own child, protecting him in every possible way from four-legged pets.
Seeing a dog on the street, even if it is walked on a leash by its owner, a woman panics. In this way, you cultivate new fears in your baby.
Cases where the child is late in the family and long-awaited require special consideration. His birth becomes the main goal in a woman’s life.
In relation to these children, you can hear the phrase - “She (mother) gave birth to him for herself.” Such a manifestation of parental selfishness leads to overprotection.
If a woman gives birth to a baby, fulfilling an old dream, she will care for and cherish him, without thinking about what consequences this will lead to.
Women suffer more often from such behavior, because their attitude towards their own children is radically different from men’s. If the father is subject to overprotection, only a competent psychologist can solve this problem.
