Photo courtesy of Molly Brennan

I was at a birthday party this afternoon for one of my daughter’s classmates. I’ve noticed that chit-chatting with parents at the birthday parties for kids in her preschool classroom actually reminds me of my pre-kids days when I spent a lot of time in dog parks. I recognized all of the dogs, but I had a hard time placing the humans, and would amuse myself trying to figure out how they paired up. It’s the same at these parties—I don’t know any of the parents that well, and I’m always trying to figure out who goes with whom.

At this party, the kids were sitting around tables waiting for their slices of Tinkerbell cake when a mother standing next to me snapped at her son, who was chewing on the end of a balloon. When she came back she sheepishly admitted that she has a completely irrational fear of balloons, and always imagines them popping in her kids’ faces and causing some kind of indescribable injury. I laughed, but not in contempt. I have irrational fears of my own that have popped up since I had kids, and a highly unofficial survey of some of my friends who are parents has shown that most of them have at least one of their own.

My name is Molly, and I have an irrational fear that my kids have cold feet. I lie awake in my bed at night sometimes—even now, that my oldest is almost five years old—and obsessively worry that they have cold feet. I put socks on them or use footy pajamas whenever I can, but it doesn’t make me worry less. Sometimes I creep into their rooms while they’re sleeping and put extra blankets over their feet. My husband thinks I’m absolutely insane, but I can’t stop myself. Luckily, I know that he has his own irrational fear.

Since becoming a parent, he has developed a fear of toxic chemicals. And I’m not talking about biohazards, I’m talking about bug spray or toilet bowl cleaner or even Windex®. I’ve actually seen him open windows after he’s sprayed down a counter top, and, if we ever have to use carpet cleaner, everyone has to clear the area for at least 30 minutes. Truth be told, his fear is probably not all that irrational, in that I’m sure that some day in the not so distant future we’ll find out exactly how harmful household chemicals are, but still, he’s a little crazy about it.

The funny thing about irrational fears, at least in our family, is how out of character they are. We’re actually pretty laid-back parents, probably to a fault in some areas. We have fairly lax standards about everything from the cleanliness of our house to how we dress our kids. I actually recently discovered that we may even have low safety standards during a recent ice skating outing when I realized that just about every kid on the pond was wearing a helmet. Oops.

There is so much about having kids that is utterly beyond your control, starting from day one when you realize that no matter how many sleep experts’ books you read you still can’t make your baby sleep. When you think about it too much, you eventually realize that you’re taking a leap of faith every time you get in the car or drop them off at day care. Maybe in some ways it’s actually healthier to obsess about stupid things like whether or not their feet are warm at night. At least there is something I can do about that.

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