My eldest daughter has always been anxious. As a baby, she was scared of lots of things: loud noises, men (especially ones with beards), dogs. I can vividly remember the first time I realised she was actually scared of something, and wasn’t crying because she was hungry or tired. She was about four months old and sitting happily in her baby bouncer. I was changing a bin bag and when I shook it out to open it, her eyes grew wide with terror and she started howling.
Her fear grew so that by the age of 18 months she was scared of hoovers, motorbikes, drills, lawnmowers. Pretty much anything that made any kind of noise really. If we were walking down the road and someone was mowing their lawn she’d scream and scream, covering her ears and cowering in fear.
Now she is four and a half years old and that anxiety manifests itself in other ways. She’s no longer scared of lawnmowers or motorbikes. These days she’s scared of more complicated things – things that she can’t always explain. Things that, to you and me, would seem like ridiculously odd things to be scared of. [Read More…]
