Mental States

   As much as I don't want to be writing this right now, here I am. There comes a point as a parent (for most people at least), where you realize some things you pass on to your children are not so great to pass on. Traits, skills, habits that you wish they would not acquire. Some of these are from being around you, others are genetic. The genetic ones are, in my opinion, the worst. This is because they are the ones you honestly have no control over and cannot in any way alter. You can sometimes make accomodations for them, but you cannot simply erase them. It's not like quitting smoking.
   This is something I have long feared with my daughter. The heart problems I have that did not become openly apparent until I was in 4th grade became apparent in her when she was 4 years old. Maybe it's just because I knew what to look for, and recognized the early signs, I do not know. Having noticed this, I hoped that the inheritance would end there, that she would be freed from the rest of my anguish. I should have known better. My sweet, adorable, wonderful, upbeat yet overly sensitive, 6 year old has now become something else. And I can't blame her, bacuse I know what it feels like to be where she is, to go through the feelings that she is having. And I can take her to a dr or a psychologist, as my parents did, or I can try to find ways to deal with this at home. I'm trying the at home approach. I'm hoping that I can show her enough of my coping mechanisms for her to twist them and manuever until she can find something beneficial that works for her in this scenario.
   In the meantime, I'm now dealing with a child that is easily upset and hurt by things but has no words to explain it, and cannot justify her own attitudes about life. While I have a generally negative outlook on many things, she is not one of those things. And this is not her own choosing. I know that. So, she is now being encouraged to wirte more, talk about her feelings more, listen to loud music (that helps her get these feelings out of her system), and to express herself in any other medium which we can mutually find acceptable. I'm hoping that if I can catch this early enough and work with it hard enough, maybe I can ultimately change her outcome. So far, I've managed to cut her episodes down to shorter time periods, I'm hoping to stretch the intervals farther. I know these get worse with age, but I am sincerely praying that if I can make adjustments now so she can learn techniques that work, they will continue to work and keep it from progressing to the point my problems have.