We're packing up and heading off, although I don't know exactly where and I don't know exactly when. All I do know is that I don't like the weight of uncertainty that is bearing down on my shoulders right now.
The house we have rented for six years is being put on the market, and for good reason. Not immediately but certainly in the immediate future. So it's time to move on and find somewhere new. The time is right for a fresh start and a new home but it’s a daunting prospect nevertheless.
It is fair to say that if any family member or close friend of mine had documented my worries, aged eight, on the Internet, I would have permanently disabled their wireless modem faster than you can say the words privacy and respect.
Therefore nothing more is going to be written about IJ's current anxiety issues here on this blog after this post. Because it wouldn’t be right and sometimes it’s very obvious where you draw the line.
Her question today about whether there was a worry shop we could go to find the solution to her constant worrying, brought home the fact that this is an issue that needs to be tackled. But in private and not online.
Obviously this presents me with a problem.
It was the year one seven-year-old girl predicted the end of the world, but later admitted she'd got her dates wrong. Apparently it’s next year. Just as well we lived 2011 to the full then.
There have been some noticeable highlights in another blogging year that has proved even more unpredictable and varied than the last. According to IJ these include watching me lug a massive box of Scalextric half way across London, touching dinosaur vomit at the Guinness World Records HQ and our day out at London Zoo courtesy of Vosene.
Not forgetting a visit to Alexandra Palace where Jumbo Toys introduced us to their new ipieces range for the ipad, and IJ took to the ice for the first time.
I was going to call this post childhood anxiety but quickly realised that anyone landing here in the hope of finding some useful information to help their own child would find themselves disappointed.
What I’m actually doing here is asking for help on this very subject. If I am able to access some helpful sites and resources I'll be sure to write a more useful post. In the meantime I'm asking: how do you help an over-anxious child?
This is not a persistent, all-consuming issue in our house, but it is one that does raise its head every so often and one that leaves me concerned and unsure what to do. It is something we are living with at the moment and it isn't easy.
IJ’s recent episode of anxiety has been caused, in part, by a trip to see Narnia with her school. It’s not a film I feel she should have been exposed to and I wasn’t aware that the trip involved the showing of a PG film that is quite scary in parts. However, I’ve made my views known and the matter has been dealt with.
But it does leave me with a child who isn’t sleeping well, who is worried about me dying and being alone in the world and who has become acutely sensitive to absolutely everything to the extent that she has resorted to watching The Tweenies, because there is nothing anxiety-provoking or frightening in the world of Jake and Milo.
And we’ve been here before.
Last year I wrote a post called Mummy, I cannot smile. We haven’t reached the stage of IJ being noticeably unhappy. She remains happy and outgoing, at least at home, but the anxieties that have been with her on and off for the last couple of years are creeping in again at night, and something isn’t right.
So how do you help an over-anxious child who winds herself up with worry and goes over and over the same concerns in her head no matter what reassurances you offer? I’d like to know.
