4 Year Old Anxiety... Socks and Being Grateful For Hundreds of Multiple Choice Tests

We just got back from a great vacation and I could tell my anxiety went down from being disconnected with the world, and news for two weeks.  While my anxiety decreased, my son's seemed to increase.  I'm not sure if it was the roller coasters we went on or just the stage in life my son is at, but I found out he has all sorts of fears.

Image taken by my husband of an alligator with a turtle on it's back

What if an alligator eats me? While my husband and I work hard to instill in my son that there are dangers in the world, we don't want him to be afraid of everything.  We try to teach him that the dangers are a reason why he needs to listen to us and stay close to us, especially when he is  in a area where there are real alligators. When he was at the ocean, he kept saying, "I don't want to go in there because there are sharks and stingrays".  I fielded many questions in the past two weeks, questions I think we all think about, and fear from time to time.

I tried to logically go through the questions and fears, explaining that accidents with wild creatures rarely happen and if we respect their space and take precautions, they typically will stay away from us.

One particular time my son went through a long line of questions.  "What if aliens get me? (he elaborated on this one, I don't exactly remember if it was being captured and held and all sorts of imaginative hypotheses, but he was elaborate).  "That won't happen," I think was my response.  "What if a shark attacks me?" "What if an alligator eats me?".  Patiently, I answered each question with a simple response- "Then you will go home to God in Heaven."  "But I don't want to go home to God in Heaven, I want to go back to our house with Dewey and Duchess."  "Really?"  I looked at him.  He has told me multiple times he wants to move into a larger house so he can have a big playroom.

After a series of several anxious scenarios in which I calmly responded to him, "Then you will go home to God in Heaven."  He came right out with it- "Mommy- I don't want to die and I don't want you to die."

I responded, "I don't want you to die either.  That's why we try to keep you safe...I don't want you to go to God in Heaven until God in Heaven wants you and I don't want to go to God until he's ready for me either."

This somehow seemed to assuage his fears and made me look at my fears too.  There are so many things to be afraid of.  But when we look at it- the ultimate end isn't something to be terribly afraid of.  It's something that no one wants to come before it is time, but that is not for us to worry about.  We can rest assured that whenever it is our time, God will be in Heaven waiting for His Children to be ready to come home.

As an aside- I had an interesting discussion with some other Lay Dominicans this week- it got pretty in depth with philosophical questions such as, "Is everything a good, is there goodness in everything."  Two interesting thoughts were shared.  A sock is a good.  A hole in the sock, is like evil.  It's not a thing or an object, but is a loss of something that undermines the integrity of the good.  My husband didn't realize this discussion when I adamantly told him he needs to throw out his socks with holes in them...

The other interesting discussion we had was about the angels.  They made their decision at the beginning of time what side they were going to be on.  As one Lay Dominican lamented, "So the angels get one pass/fail test and then it's over and we have to work every minute and hour for our redemption?"  As we briefly thought of envying the angels, someone else blurted out, "It may be pass/fail, but the fail is A BIG ONE."  I never thought I would be grateful for hundreds of multiple choice tests every day...