When my daughter was four, she said to me, “Mommy, I’m worried.” She had tension in her voice and fear in her eyes.
Concerned, I asked, “Sweetie, what are you worried about?”
With mounting frustration, she replied, “I don’t know.”
My first instinct as a parent was to get in there and try to fix it, as if I had the power to remove the painful emotion from her body. I wanted to tell her that everything was okay and there was nothing to worry about, then make her some popcorn, put in a movie, and give her an extra snuggle.