When an Anxious Child Becomes an Anxious Parent (Guest Post)

a guest essay by Carlos Greaves

The Pomegranate is delighted to feature an essay from writer and humorist Carlos Greaves in honor of Father’s Day.

When I was six years old, my dad made it his mission to teach me how to do the monkey bars. I was a cautious kid in virtually every respect — shy, risk-averse, a picky eater. If the experience was new or involved the slightest bit of danger, I was out.

I don’t remember how or when my dad noticed that I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) do the monkey bars. He must have watched me playing on the playground at some point, and saw me diligently avoiding the monkey bars like the plague.

For whatever reason, to my dad, this was unacceptable child behavior. So, one evening, after work, he took me (very much against my will) to my elementary school’s playground — which had a set of iron monkey bars spanning two tall, wooden platforms — so that I could learn.

He started small – lifting me up to the first rung and making me hang there while he spotted me. Though I resisted at first, this initial step proved doable.

Then my dad asked me to do what (to me) seemed unthinkable — he told me to let go.

My dad’s logic was, if I could get over my fear of falling (from what, by an adult account, was a very safe height for a kid to fall from), then the physical skill of learning to swing from rung to rung would be a piece of cake.

But letting myself plummet to the ground (from what, as a child, felt like death-defying, Evel Knievel heights) was not about to happen. Instead, as soon as my dad let go of me, I swung myself back onto the wooden platform, went down the slide, and high-tailed it back to the car.

This plan had its limitations, seeing as how I could neither A) outrun a grown man, nor B) open the car without the keys. Nevertheless, this pattern repeated itself until my dad finally decided to call it a night.

I’ve been thinking about how my dad raised me, because Sunday is my first Father’s Day as a father. And even though my four-month-old isn’t talking, or walking, or even crawling yet, I’m already debating in my head how I am going to raise her — in what ways I will follow in my dad’s footsteps, and in what ways I will do the exact opposite of what he did.

I have struggled with anxiety my entire life. As an adult, I started trying to identify the root cause. And it didn’t take long for me to come to the conclusion that having an intense, overbearing father who constantly pushed me beyond my limits might have contributed to that anxiety.

My wife recently sent me an article that took me by surprise. It said that parents of successful children let their kids pursue whatever interests them; then they find the right mentors for their child rather than doing the coaching themselves.

This made me laugh, because that is the exact opposite of my dad’s approach. My dad was a prototypical immigrant parent. While some dads are emotionally distant, my dad was, if anything, emotionally way too close. My siblings and I jokingly call him “Coach Carlos” now because of the ways he pushed us in every aspect of our lives growing up, whether it was math or the monkey bars. Plus he was, quite literally, our soccer coach.

From reading that article, you’d think that my dad’s methods would’ve led to a bunch of maladjusted, burnt out children. But, struggles with my anxiety aside, my siblings and I are pretty happy and successful people. My sister is a lawyer, my brother is a tech founder, and I’m…well, I’m a mostly employed comedy writer (but I left my thriving electrical engineering career by choice! By choice, I tell you!).

A few months ago, I had a conversation with my mom that made me question my assessment of where my anxiety originated. The topic of exposure therapy came up, and my mom said that, while she didn’t always agree with my dad’s methods, she thought that my dad forcing me to confront my fears at an early age might have actually helped me cope with my anxiety better than if he had let me run from those fears.

After that conversation, I found myself thinking about my anxiety in an entire different way. Yes, I have panic attacks, and I struggle with public speaking. But I haven’t let that anxiety stop me from performing improv. Or reading humor pieces in front of audiences. Or pitching the pilot I’m working on to rooms full of people at comedy festivals. Maybe my dad pushing me the way he did isn’t the reason I’m so anxious all the time. Maybe he’s the reason I’m able to do what I do in spite of being so anxious.

I don’t remember how many trips to the playground it ultimately took, or how many getaways I attempted. But, eventually, my dad’s stubbornness won out over my stubbornness. And one day, my dad hoisted me up onto the monkey bars, and I let myself fall.

Which is how, at age six, I shattered both of my femurs.

Kidding! I was totally fine. Completely unscathed. My fear of falling had proven to be completely unfounded. And just as my dad had predicted, with that fear vanquished, I quickly learned how to swing myself from bar to bar, platform to platform.

I think about all of the other monkey bars I’ve crossed in my life – all those things that seemed insurmountably terrifying in the moment, but, in hindsight, went totally fine.

I don’t agree with my dad’s methods. Nor do I plan to spend weeks on end forcing my daughter to do the monkey bars like some sort of playground-obsessed maniac. And, as a naturally anxious person, I’m scared to death about how to be a good parent, and what mistakes I’m going to make along the way.

But I also know that fears can be overcome. And, just like my dad did, I’m gonna find a way to teach my daughter that, too.

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Carlos Greaves is an Afro-Latino electrical engineer turned comedy writer — a career move that haunts his parents to this day. He’s a former contributor to The Onion, teaches online satire and personal essay classes at The Second City, coaches at Hillside Writing, and runs the humor newsletter Shades of Greaves.

His writing has been featured in The New Yorker, NPR, and he’s a frequent contributor to the humor site McSweeney’s — so frequent that the editors decided it would be easier to pay him a flat monthly rate as the site’s topical satire columnist. In 2023, he was a writer on the Peacock special, Back That Year Up, hosted by Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson. He is currently developing an animated series, Fuerza, about an undocumented Latina with superpowers, through Yes, And Laughter Lab.

His debut book, Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter and is available wherever you get your books.