Children’s Mental Health: Is My Anxiety Contagious?

So… I was reading this post by Three Time Daddy about children’s mental health and it got me thinking. He mentions studies that have shown a possible genetic link and obviously it’s something I’ve thought about before. I wrote about how my anxiety affects my parenting last year, but I haven’t really written about how it affects my kids directly.

Children’s Mental Health

That deserves to be big and bold because it’s important. Obviously, it is. As a mum, I want my kids to grow up happy and healthy. I know as well as anybody that health is not just a physical thing. While I wish that for them too, I would do anything to protect them from experiencing depression and anxiety the way I have. But we can’t always protect our kids from everything, can we?

I’m actually not too worried about the genetic side of things

There’s nothing I can do about that now, is there? If my kids’ prize in the genetic lottery is an increased risk of mental illness, it’s too late to take it back now. When I think about the years I spent thinking I might never have children, if someone had told me that the price of having kids would be that they might inherit my mental health problems…. I still would have had kids. That sounds terribly selfish, now that I’ve written it down, but it’s true. Being a mum meant everything to me and it still does. Besides, “might” isn’t “definitely” and, even if it was, it’s not the worst thing they could get from me. They could inherit my eyebrows, for example! Or my ability to gain 7lb just by looking at a chocolate bar.

But is my anxiety contagious?

That’s what I worry about. After years of living with my anxiety… will it rub off on them? Will the learn anxious behaviours from me, the way they learn other stuff? Are the familiar little mannerisms that they’ve picked up already just the beginning?

Obviously, I can’t know for sure. But I do worry about it. It’s no secret that I’m struggling with my mental health at the moment. I try to hide it from the twins, but they’re smarter than they look. They see me struggling to stay calm; they see me with a fake smile, when I’m feeling sad. Kids pick up on that stuff, right?

As for whether it’s contagious… whether prolonged exposure will cause them to “catch” my anxiety… I don’t know. I think about it often. It’s just one more thing to add to the mumguilt pile, right?

My kids are amazing

I look at them and I can’t believe how lucky I am. After everything we went through to become parents, we hit the baby jackpot with the twins. But Alice is definitely… quirky. And sensitive. She’s shy around people she doesn’t know, resistant to change, panics at the slightest thing… Does it worry me? Of course it does. She might just be an odd kid. That’s definitely something she could have inherited from me. But I do worry that she’ll grow up struggling with anxiety the way I do.

Now that I’ve written this, I’m not sure what the point was. It doesn’t achieve anything, really. I can’t even answer my own question. But it does help to “talk” it out. I’m sure I’m not the only parent who worries about this stuff.

So, if you worry about it, too… let me know in the comments below.