A confession...

8

Depression and anxiety. Genetics thereof...

I've had mild depression since my early 20s or maybe earlier. And type I diabetes since i was 11. The two are related i think. But anyway, as i got older, i always thought having a kid would be a bad idea for me. Fear of transmitting my genetics to the next generation.

But my now wife and i had hot sex one july 4th, condom failure and we're pregnant. Best thing that ever happened to me. Got me to commit to marriage and fatherhood when neither was necessarily attractive to me. Maybe neither would ever have happened if we didn't make this necessary choice. No regrets, ever. Love my wife and son more than life.

Fast forward 11 years. My son has this amazing brain. But also the baggage that comes with mine. And some of my wife's baggage too. Anxiety disorder and depression finally exposed themselves this year. This kid is struggling with panic attacks over school, a new school with more kids and older kids. Major self esteem issues and inability to talk back to the negative self talk in his head. Heavy therapy, had to put him on an anti-depressant while we work out the fear issues. Hitting it hard from multiple angles. He's a trooper, takes all the work in stride. Wants to feel normal. Has trouble accepting the anxiety. And my wife and i look at the situation and just feel guilty for out contribution to his suffering.

I'm hopeful we'll get over it, learn to cope, hopefully improve the self confidence and feeling of well being and safety. But as many of the women on here know, this anxiety is a tough l nut to crack, and starting meds at 11 really makes me sad. While i can relate directly to his feelings of worthlessness and negativity, i can't relate to the panic side of things. I can accept him as is easily. I've expected the need to intervene at some point in his life knowing how his brain works. Harder for my wife, this is challenging her faith. She is on her own journey of self acceptance. We all are really. It is tough.

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dansiego3:
Thanks @jezzied and @sencha.  He has great support around him.  As somewhat mature first time parents of an only child, he grew into a more adult environment, kinda missed out on playing and learning from peers.  I overlooked this.  He had preschool and has some close friends, pretty good socially for the mild introvert that he is.  So his peers and schoolwork kind of bore him.  We have some socialization issues around the three of us really.  And as a parent one quickly learns how easy it is to influence your kid in ways you wish you hadn't.  It seems almost unavoidable.  We gotta accept it and focus on the many available positive approaches we can apply to the problem.  I don't feel the stigma that many do about depression.  We have to watch out for that still though.
dansiego3:
By way of update.  We gave up trying to conquer the fear of the bigger school.  Found a charter school, smaller number of kids of all ages.  He starts today, hoping it goes ok.  Relieved an incredible amount of stress for him, he's doing alot better since we made this decision.  I'm gonna go volunteer over there so he feels safer.  It takes the pressure off the comgnitive progress, gives us time in therapy to work on the depression which i think is the root cause of the anxiety.  I don't know, this poor kid has so many fears, i've got a list of about 20 things and some of them are big.

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