As parents, we've come to realize that the things that drive us most crazy about our kids are the things that they inherited from us that we don't much like in ourselves.
Case in point...one of my children woke up with an eye that didn't feel quite right. She immediately made the Evel Knievel leap to "I've got pink-eye. I'm going to have to miss school. How will I make up all the work I'm going to miss? Will I have to go to the doctor? If they give me medicine, will it make me sick or will it hurt?" She apparently laid awake until she couldn't stand it any longer. Decided to come wake us up at 5AM. I'm not sure how long she was awake with the churning going on in that head.
I admit, once I looked at her eye and realized she was completely fine, I got annoyed. Mostly, I got annoyed because she takes after me in this crazy. I can ignore the heck out of an illness or an injury. However, once I admit that I may be injured or sick, I go straight into hypochondriac mode. Crazy. Cakes. Hysteria. Well, hysteria may be a little too strong of a word. But, obsessive is probably not out of the question.
Sometimes, this hyper-focus can be a good thing. Not very often, but it does happen. My concern about an illness when Sydney was a baby led the doctors to test a couple extra things. Once resulting in a diagnosis of Salmonella. Once in finding out she had a rare bacterial infection in her urinary tract. Sydney also takes after me in the "never get anything normal" sickness department. These things would obviously have been discovered eventually, but I "knew" something wasn't right. I think as parents, we generally know our children better than anyone. So, we know when something is really wrong.
I have also lain awake at night worrying about something, only to wake up the next morning to discover they are fine. Or I'm fine. Or the dog is fine. Or that noise I heard when Mark was out of town was clearly not someone breaking in to murder us all in our sleep. You know, since it's morning and we are all alive.
This also manifests in other super fun ways. Occasionally, I will over-think something and freeze up...unable to proceed with whatever task it is. Our kitchen back-splash took several months to go up. Not the actual tiling process, the starting. I bought the tile and other supplies and they sat in the garage for weeks. And they sat, and sat, and sat. Until one day, Mark got them out and started tiling. Wait, what? I wasn't ready! We had never done a tiling job before. I was frozen with my fear of the unknown.
Syd and I have the same irritating ability to take a small grain of fear and obsess over it until it becomes this huge, seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Until it's not. It often takes Mark and his logic to snap us out of it. Usually because we get mad at him. Lucky guy.
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