Understanding Your Child’s Anxiety

Is your child struggling with anxiety? Why? And what can you do to help them?

First, let’s try to understand your child’s anxiety.

A child’s anxiety may be the result of not outgrowing the fears and worries that are typical in young children, or when their fears and worries interfere with school, home, or play activities.

Your child’s anxiety may center around:

• Being very afraid when away from parents (separation anxiety)

• Having extreme fear about a specific thing or situation, such as dogs, insects, or going to the doctor (phobias)

• Being afraid of school and other places where there are people (social anxiety)

• Being worried about the future and bad things that might happen (general anxiety)

• Having repeated episodes of sudden, unexpected, intense fear that come with symptoms like heart pounding, having trouble breathing, or feeling dizzy, shaky, or sweaty (panic disorder)

Your child’s anxiety may present as fear or worry but can also make children irritable and angry and act out behaviorally. Anxiety symptoms may also include trouble sleeping, as well as physical symptoms like fatigue, headaches, or stomachaches. Some anxious children keep their worries to themselves. If so, the symptoms can be missed. The effects of stress can have a cumulative impact and be delayed up to 12 months before they are experienced. That means it’s so important develop a safe space for your child to talk about their feelings.

There are three ingredients in anxiety:

1.     Biological sensitivity

2.     Personality traits

3.     Stress overload

A person who experiences all three is far more likely to have anxiety. Personality traits of children and adults with anxiety include:

·       Being highly responsible

·       Perfectionistic

·       Stressed out

·       Excessive worrying

·       A need to please

·       Avoidance of conflict

·       Very structured and low assertiveness

Students who fit the anxiety personality tend to be:

·       Very cooperative

·       Highly motivated

·       Very thoughtful

·       Reflective

·       Stressed out

·       Easily exploited

·       And take things personally

In dealing with anxiety, it’s important to look at the symptoms, sources, and solutions. 

Symptoms include negative attitudes, irritability, depression, anxiety, aggression, withdrawal, or avoidances. Somatic symptoms include sleep disturbance, headache, restlessness, increased heart rate, cold/sweaty hands, breathing difficulty, muscle tension, and fatigue.

Sources of anxiety for children are family school, media, society, and the world. 

Solutions include behavior health, time management, reasonable goals, outside recreation, structure, media limits and relaxation.

With the pandemic, children and teens are missing socializing with their peers. Peer relationships are crucial to feel good and develop social skills. Our new normal is fear of interacting. Children prone to anxiety may feel rejection when someone steers away from them just trying to socially distance. Masks also help increase anxiety by blocking the child’s ability to read social cues and facial expressions and may cause claustrophobia.

So, the big question: How do you help your child?

Listen to your child, empathize with them, and validate their feelings. Children experience and navigate the world in a different way than adults. Their worries may not be rationale or fact based but they are still valid to the child. Validate their feelings and help them identify the feelings as anxiety.

Do not reassure your child by saying things like “It’s going to be okay” or “There’s nothing to worry about.” Instead, help your child to understand their feelings are real and see that anxiety and panic are normal bodily functions.

Teach them coping skills to help calm down. Regular exercise, play, deep breathing, talking about feelings, and relaxation techniques help ease anxiety. It’s also important to turn off screens one hour before bedtime.

Help your child to tolerate uncomfortable feelings rather than run away from them. They need to understand that when they do something while being anxious, the anxiety eventually lessons or goes away. If a child learns to tolerate and cope with hard feelings at a young age, they are less likely to self-medicate later.

Reward your child’s hard work with lots of verbal praise when they accomplish tasks while tolerating anxiety.

Schedule regular play dates for your child or get them involved in team sport or other activities where they can interact with peers.

Play is crucial. Play is a child’s way of communicating, developing their imagination and social skills. Make sure your child has time to play inside or outside, with others or even alone. Children need to use their imagination, get exercise, and interact. Keep video games to a minimum, they are not calming and not a child’s natural form of play.

You know your child best, so use this knowledge to identify any inconsistencies and concerns in their behavior. A lot of children are experiencing panic attack, night terrors and developing phobias for the first time because of the pandemic. If you notice new or worsened symptoms in your child, it is a good idea to contact your primary physician or a counselor for help. We are here to help you and your children! Call the Renewing Life Center to schedule an appointment at 702-434-7290.