How do I get my wife to stop worrying about our son so much?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My wife worries about our four year old son to a degree that annoys me, and him I think.

If he slips and falls she freaks out no matter whether he bawls for 2 seconds or 2 minutes. I say if he doesn’t even shout or cry he is fine. If he comes to me for comfort, or I am near him of course I take him in my arms but I don’t see the need to run to him and make a big deal if he seems ok.

She won’t let him play in our yard without 100% direct visual observation, despite the fact the door is wide open and there are bay windows easy to observe him and if anything happens he would cry and can run inside. Nope have to be outside, watching him at all times. If he sits on the ground she worries he could get tapeworms or a disease, if he steps in the drain canal she freaks out he could get disease, if he eats a acerola berry without washing it disease.She worries he could fall 4 feet onto dirt, I say well he will learn not to do whatever it was he was doing when he fell. A crazed stray dog could somehow get inside the fence like a pitbull, how this would happen without our dogs barking or the stray dog barking and alerting us I don’t know. Basically we are within 10-20 feet of the door no matter what we’re doing in the house, we could be outside in seconds.

I let him sit without pants and play in some sand a relative was storing in the yard and he got a minor skin rash on his butt, you can bet I got an earful about that.

What if he eats a random plant in the yard, on and on on.

She finds me careless and wreckless, and I admit I might be too far on the not worrying side. But I find she is too far in the other way. How can I get her to just chill out?

2

Wrong question. Not going to happen, just like you’re not going to adopt her attitude.

Nor should you, IMO, as you’re both rather extreme. It bothers you that she must have her eyes on the kid at all times? Come on, that’s insane. First of all, why would that bother you? Second, seems like a good policy to me for younger kids. At four that may not be 100% necessary at all times anymore, but it’s not like he’s twelve.

What you need to do is figure out what it is she does that really bothers you and what you can simply ignore. She does the same. Then you compromise: she pretends it doesn’t freak her out when the kid touches random plants and you put some pants on the kid.

3

sounds like some kind of anxiety disorder to me. maybe a therapist would help but getting her to see the need for one may be difficult.

4

What bothers me is that she doesn’t trust me to watch him because I am not constantly telling him “NO don’t do that!”, obviously I wouldn’t sit by and let him eat a random plant but I’m also not going to scold him for just touching one or pulling a leaf off and playing with it. Also I will walk 10 feet to the kitchen to get a drink, or will sit outside with him and use a tablet PC, numerous other reasons why my supervision is not good enough and then she feels compelled to come relieve me of duty. But she also doesn’t feel like sitting outside all the time so then she just keeps him cooped up in the house, when he would really like to go outside.

Basically she finds my supervision inferior.

5

Some people are weird like that, massively over protective of the kid. How is she going to cope when the kid goes to school?

How you’re going to get her to pull back is beyond me to answer as I don’t know her personally. If you can’t convince her she has a problem, you aren’t going to get her to get counselling either.

Just accept the fact that she’s a overprotective and work out a balance of behavior that keeps her off your back if not totally satisfied. Assuming she doesn’t turn the kid into a total wimp, he’ll start giving her some clear hints to back off as he gets older.

6

Sorry, I’m on your wife’s side on this one, at least when it comes to insisting on someone be outside with him at all times. A lot of parents of non-verbal kids are very protective because they can’t tell anyone else anything if they wander off and get into trouble. And they do wander off: 91% of kids with autism under the age of 16 who die by misadventure drown after wandering out of their yards, often in water sources the parents weren’t even aware of.

7

Did I miss something? Where did it say his kid was non-verbal or had autism?

8

Maybe you can strike a compromise with her. You can promise to do a better job keeping your eyes on him, if she promises to try to hold back on saying “DON’T TOUCH THAT!”

You can say that you’re worried she’s going to give the kid an anxiety disorder. You’d rather he get a little rash on occasion than live in constant fear.

But that’s all I’m going to recommend, since I don’t know how unreasonable either of you are being. This isn’t the first thread where you’ve talked about your crazy wife and even crazier mother. I guess I get a bit suspicious when someone portrays themselves as the island of sanity.

9

Send him off to college.

10

Is this your only child? Have another. Very difficult to keep eyes on a five year old and a one year old at the same time. :wink:

Isn’t that why eldest children are the most likely to have asthma - because the parents are more likely to be constantly cleaning, thus denying the child an opportunity to build up resistance, but then once more kids come into the equation, the parents don’t have the time to clean.

11

The only time I have posted about my wife was the tadpole thread, I have posted about my wife’s annoying family though like her brother. My wife is sane compared to me lol.

And to clarify what I meant I have no issue with someone having to watch him in the yard and I agree with it, just that I think going to the kitchen where he is still visible to me through windows shouldn’t be a problem. In case it was unclear, I’m not sleeping or watching a movie etc.

12

He is selectively verbal(he will ask for things he wants) and probably does have autism(I’ve talked about him in previous threads), but even if he wasn’t I wouldn’t leave him out of my eyesight outside.

13

Grude’s wife sounds a little helicopter-parent-ish.

I like monstro’s idea that grude be a little more helicopter parent-ish (for example, go over if he falls down [without rushing or being upset], just make sure he’s ok, then let him get up himself). And grude’s wife not rush over and freak out about dirt.

14

Meh… I don’t see anything wrong with her behavior, in fact it’s pretty common especially for single child families.

My wife had a brother who passed away at 7 years old because of a kidney failure. Ever since we had our first boy, who is the spitting image of her brother, she has been extremely protective of him. He’ll be 9 in a couple of weeks.

3 pregnancies and 2 more children later (6 and 4), she has loosened up a lot and gives our kids a lot more space and freedom. I always joke that one problem with having 3 kids is that you can always find 2 of them  but the 3rd you're never quite sure where they are. :)



We live on a quiet, child-friendly street with lots of neighbours with multiple children so we have a great parenting village where the kids can play up and down the street, backyard to backyard. When there's a gang in our yard, we monitor them and my neighbours do the same.

They’re not always within direct eyesight, but they are in earshot and all the adults, parents or not, keep an eye out.

We’ve trained them to stay on our street, not to go into anyone’s home without asking us first, and to come home when the street lights come on.

15

Wait. Didn’t you just tell us that you would do things like go inside to get a drink of water, while he’s playing outside?

16

I do remember my cousin telling me with her daughter (who was a toddler at the time) that if she fell down, it was better not to react until the kid reacted, as kids take their cues from adults. So it sounds like maybe your wife is more reactive than you are. But I do think I’d feel uncomfortable leaving a four year old alone in the backyard, even just to get a drink of water. Maybe some change on both sides would be good.

17

The yard is fenced in, right? I think if it’s fenced in, and you can see him through the kitchen window, going in to get a drink is probably fine.

How much of a tendency does he have to put things in his mouth? this is a stage toddlers go through. Maybe he was doing it more a few years ago, and your wife was more tuned into it if she was home with him, and you were not (I’m just guessing, because I don’t know your childcare situation). He may have outgrown it, and she may not realize the degree.

Did she have a difficult pregnancy or was his birth difficult? I have a friend who nearly died, and nearly lost her son, and then the baby was in the NICU for two months, because she had sudden onset eclampsia. Se was wildly overprotective of her son, and I was patient with it for a few years, but buy the time he was three, and it was starting to affect him, I got less patient with it. My son was born blue after an unplanned c-section, and had to be resuscitated. I was unconscious, and I’m really glad that I was, because if I had seen him emerge looking dead (according to my husband), I’m sure I would be overprotective of him. As it is, I tend toward free-range type parenting. He’s 7, and I let him scramble his own eggs for breakfast, because he wanted to, and I thought, why not? I watch him the whole time, I don’t just put him in front of the stove and walk away, but he’s gotten good at it, and is proud of himself. He also eats the whole thing. (It helps that he is tall for his age, and can reach the front burners easily.) I think if I’d seen him “dead,” I’d want to roll him in bubble wrap, and not let him try anything remotely dangerous.

If there’s anything like that, then she might need professional help to work through it.

As far as worrying that he’ll wander away, and not be able to tell people where he lives, maybe you should get him an ID bracelet with your cell phone numbers on it. Something like “If I’m lost call my dad xxx-xxx-xxxx; my mom xxx-xxx-xxxx.”

18

Yes, the kitchen is 10 feet from the open glass paned door surrounded by windows and there is no wall separating the kitchen, so if I can visually see my son at all points I don’t consider him unattended and I’m back out with him in less than a minute or two.

You know thinking about it more I was mostly non-verbal as a young kid too, and I HATED when my parents or others would treat me as delicate or different. I don’t know if my wife would be so protective otherwise, but I feel like she is coddling him because of it. And it bugs me, and I don’t think it is good for him.

She says she can’t just watch him do stuff and not say something or try to stop him.

19

There’s a four-foot drop somewhere in the yard? I understand letting kids learn from their mistakes, but that seems like a somewhat difficult lesson.

20

The yard is fenced in, I have never observed him to put random things in his mouth except acerola berries which come from small trees in the yard(they aren’t even there all the time, and only cause he saw us eating them).

He was a difficult pregnancy and birth, my wife had really bad nausea the entire time and then had pre-eclampsia so he was delivered via C section early. He was four and a half pounds at birth and wouldn’t breast feed. I guess I didn’t think of that aspect.

But now he is 68 and a half pounds heh.