Anxiety is the killer. It is probably not your children’s school, violence or sex on TV, or the Internet that will potentially derail your children from potential greatness. It’s family anxiety. Often chronic, often hidden or disguised, it is that cumulative cloud of reactions to unresolved conflicts, the worry upon worry, the anger toward unmet dreams and expectations, and the bank of resentment gathered from multiple life disappointments.
Yes. You can send your children to the “right” schools, monitor their organic diets, safe-guard their television intake, pre-read their literature, create intricate computer firewalls, secure coaching and extra-lessons from the finest humans available, and then nullify all your determined efforts simply because your source of “care” and concern is soaked in anxiety and propelled and driven by it.
Family Anxiety is managed, reduced, redirected, when individual family members recognize it and address it individually. It is reduced through meaningful, appropriate connection and reconnection with blood and legal relatives where possible. It is reduced through determined “differentiation of self” (increased intimacy and increased autonomy) on the part of all members of the family (although even the efforts of one will have its rewards). It is reduced when individuals “see” that love and worry are not the same thing.