Written by fatherhood contributor Shaun Groves.

Mrs. Roosth was tall and gaunt, uncomfortably quiet, with small eyes and angry hands.

I leaned back too far in my chair and landed with a thump on the classroom floor. She wrapped her bony fingers around my arm, yanked me up to my feet and just about threw me into the nearest corner to stand for the rest of the day. A few hours. I was in the first grade.

My stomach hurt. My muscles spasmed in my back. My chest grew tight. I thought I might die. But I didn’t say a word.

That’s my earliest memory of serious anxiety. But not my last. Or worst.

I missed a Homecoming dance in high school because anxiety so debilitated me that I couldn’t stand and walk.

I was so heavily medicated on my wedding day that I slept through the first night of the honeymoon!

I turned down my first offer of a record deal because I fear traveling. And just the worrying about it doubled me over in pain and sent me to bed for the better part of a day.

But since eventually signing that record deal, I’ve traveled to around 100 cities every year for twelve years. As a musician and speaker I’ve stood on stage and done my thing in front of tens of thousands of people. Sometimes all at once. As a spokesperson for Compassion International, I’ve traveled to ten developing countries with questionable airplanes, eaten grub worms and guinea pig, and lunched with posh dignitaries and mobs of slum children.

No more debilitating anxiety. How’d that happen? And how can we as parents stave off the anxiety of our children?
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Written by contributor Robin Dance of Pensieve.

Though I didn’t have words to articulate it at the time, looking back I realize these could be filed under “Injustices of Youth”:

In 6th grade:

The boy I liked gave me a letter another girl had given him.  It was laced with profane words and (sexual) actions I had never heard of; horrified, I turned it in to my teacher, who in turn, took it to the principal.

All three of us were summoned to the office (the boy, the letter writer, and me) and punishments were doled out:  we were all required to write “lines” (Remember those?  Do they do that anymore in school??) and my sentence was “I will not read letters not addressed to me.”  Five hundred times.

I don’t remember their sentences, but his was 750 times and hers was 1,000.  I was the only one who completed it and turned it in.  I don’t think my dad was called and because I was led to believe I had done something wrong, I didn’t tell him; I was punished, after all.

In 7th grade:

I had braces, and for a season I was supposed to wear headgear 23/7.  The kind with straps across the back of your head and metal bars protruding from your mouth; torture devices–emotionally and physically, for a teenage girl.

To minimize the Nerd Factor, I wore a bandana to cover part of it.  When I arrived at Social Studies that first day, Mrs. Lumley promptly instructed me to remove the bandana because our school had a “No Hats” policy.  Mortified, I complied, but I also took off my headgear.  Quite possibly my first Worst Hair Day ever and I remember feeling embarrassed and UGLY all day long.

I’m sure many of you have similar stories with different circumstances.  The bottom line was that an adult/authority figure exerted control over you, for which you were not in a position to argue, defend, or disobey.

And it wasn’t fair…it truly wasn’t fair!

I believe it’s crucial for a child’s maturation to suffer the consequences of poor decisions.

If he makes a poor choice, he’ll learn best when he has to pay a price for bad judgment – not if you bail him out every time.  Otherwise, you’ll create an unattractive victim mentality.  That will not serve him now or through adulthood, or society in general ever!

But sometimes, your child needs you to be his advocate, when you see a true injustice and he’s not in a position to speak for himself.

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