The Fears I Inadvertently Give My Children

Yesterday we were driving to gymnastics and Strawberry suddenly yelled out, "Oh no!  I forgot to drink any water today and I promised Heavenly Father I would!"  She was pretty upset about it and I asked her why she had promised that.  She said that she realized in the middle of last night that she hadn't drunk any water the day before and she was scared to get up and get some by herself.  So she prayed that she wouldn't die and she promised Heavenly Father that if he kept her alive, she would remember to drink lots of water the next day.

I asked her why she thought that she would die and she said that I had told her that people have to drink water to stay alive.  I explained to her that there is water in all of our drinks, including milk and juice and even some in our food and that if she wasn't getting enough water to stay alive, she would get really really thirsty.  The funny thing is that she had been drinking water over the past two days.  I usually give them water for lunch and she and Apple are always and filling up little cups of water for themselves.  I guess she just forgot about it or something.

But it made me feel bad to realize that she had this fear hanging over her and I didn't know about it.  It made me wonder what other things she has heard me say that worry her.  I remember when I was little, we would hear over and over that you should never drink and drive.  But my dad always had a big cup of soda when we went on trips.  It really stressed me out because I was worried that something bad was going to happen.  I wasn't worried about crashing so I'm not sure what calamity I thought was awaiting him.  It took a long time for me to realize it referred to drunk driving.  Even now, years later, whenever I hear that phrase, I think of my dad with his Dr. Pepper.

Strawberry has also been struggling a little controlling her thoughts.  She told me the other day that during movies she watches, she always repeats the bad words in her mind and asked me if I do the same thing.  This confused me a little because she usually only watches cartoons or things like Narnia, and I couldn't think of any swearing in the dialogue.  She also said that sometimes she will sit there and say bad words in her head when she is mad, especially when she is upset with her sisters.  She was tearing up a little and told me that she always repents of thinking the bad words, but it was hard because she said them in her mind so often.  I asked her what words she would think of when she was mad.  "Usually 'Dork!' or 'Stupidhead!' if it is Apple or 'Stinking baby!' if it is Mango."  Yeah, the "bad words" from movies were similar.  Oh my land, it was so hard not to laugh at my sweet little girl confessing this to me.  I knew that she knows what the swear words are because she has heard them at school and so I had assumed she was thinking swears.

I told her that I definitely do the same thing, but that if we can keep those words to ourselves instead of saying them out loud, that we are actually choosing the right and so she didn't need to repent unless she really felt like she needed to.  And that if she was really mad at her sisters, she should count to 10 in her mind instead or maybe sing a song and that would help keep the bad words out.  I don't know if that will work.  As I recall, my brothers and I just said all the bad words out loud at each other.  I remember we always used to get into trouble for saying, "I'm going to kill you!!"  Strawberry is definitely a worrier.  I always tell her that if there is something on her mind, she can ask me anything, but she is always a little scared about what I'm going to think.  Poor girl.