My son Sam is a worrier and a perfectionist. Those two do not go hand in hand easily. What Sam struggles with the most is that he does not undertake anything he does not think he can accomplish. When beginning something new, he goes through a period of worrying about and analyzing the thing he wants to do, because he doesn’t want to do it if he can’t finish it, or do it well. The bigger problem is that most of the things he worries about are things he can’t do yet– like going to college, or finding a wife, or having kids, or finding a job and making money. So he gets stuck in this worry cycle. And when Sam worries, he asks a lot of questions.
“Mom, college is going to be hard. I don’t think I can do it.”
“Mom, how will I ever find a wife? What if she leaves me? How will I know if she wants kids? How can I get a boy AND a girl?”
“How do people find jobs? You can’t just walk into a place and say, ‘Hey, give me a job.’ What if I don’t make a lot of money? I want to make a lot of money. But if I have a wife and a family, I’ll have to provide for them. That seems too hard. Maybe I don’t want kids.”
“If I have kids, I’m going to have to teach them everything. How do kids learn words? There’s a MILLION words in the English language. I can’t teach them ALL THE WORDS! Maybe I don’t want kids. It’s going to be too hard.”
My response to the kids thing? Your wife will tell you whether or not you want kids. 😉
