As an adult, it’s probably hard to believe that a child can experience anxiety!
However, in our ever-changing and unpredictable world, the number of children dealing with anxiety has been steadily increasing.
If you believe your child is struggling with anxiety but you’re not sure how to recognize it, here is a guide to childhood anxiety, the symptoms, and how you can help your child:
What is Childhood Anxiety?
The term “anxiety” describes a sense of excessive worry. While feeling anxious after something upsetting happens, having anxiety that lasts for a long time and prevents your child from doing things (like going to school) can become a disorder.
It’s hard to say what the exact cause of anxiety is for children, but some children are genetically predisposed to anxiety due to biological factors such as their genes or brain wiring.
However, psychological factors can contribute to childhood anxiety as well such as their natural temperament or ability to cope with stressful situations.
Childhood anxiety can also be caused by environmental factors such as growing up with anxious parents or experiencing troubling childhood experiences.
Normal Childhood Worries
While anxiety can significantly impact your child’s day, there are common worries children face that are completely normal!
Challenging tasks, new situations, and unfamiliar people can cause normal feelings of worry.
Some age-appropriate worries include fears of bugs, the dark, monsters, storms, strangers, and school.
It’s when these worries engulf your child that they become anxieties and when it comes to childhood anxiety, there are different types:
Types of Childhood Anxiety
Childhood anxieties can be categorized and the symptoms can vary. Knowing what type of anxiety your child is experiencing can help you better address it!
Here are the different types of childhood anxiety:
Separation Anxiety
As far as childhood anxieties go, this one is fairly common. It involves fear, often exaggerated, that something will happen to their parent or caregiver when apart from the child.
Separation anxiety generally occurs around the age of 3 or 4 and the symptoms are easy to spot. If your child has separation anxiety, you will notice that they refuse to go anywhere without you, refuse to sleep alone, or refuse to go to school.
Generalized Anxiety
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) can happen to both children and adults. It is characterized by excessive worry and fear for six months or more that is triggered by a variety of things.
These triggers can include school, friends, activities, and the fear of failure.
Children with GAD typically have a hard time controlling their emotions because they cannot pinpoint where their anxiety is coming from. This distress can lead to sleeping issues, emotional outbursts, and trouble concentrating.
Panic Attacks
Panic attacks are uncommon in children but can happen during their teenage years. Panic attacks involve intense fear, physical symptoms (such as dizziness and chest pain), and a sense of depersonalization (they feel detached from themselves).
Phobias
Phobias are intense and specific fears your child associates with certain objects, people, or situations.
They can be caused by prior negative experiences (such as having a fear of dogs if they were attacked by a dog) or they can pop up out of the blue (like being afraid of spiders).
For inexplicable phobias, children usually grow out of these as they get older. For phobias with a root cause, they can grow out of them or carry them for the rest of their lives.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, occurs when children have recurring thoughts that are intrusive and obsessive.
This can also be accompanied by repetitive behaviors or compulsions that have to be performed to keep away the anxiety.
Signs That Your Child Has Anxiety
While different types of childhood anxiety have different symptoms, some general symptoms include:
- Anger
- Avoidant behavior
- Refusing to go to school
- Bedwetting
- Nightmares
- Changes in appetite
- Trouble at school
- Fatigue
- Nervous habits
- Irritability
- Restlessness
- Muscle tension
- Stomach aches
- Headaches
- Trouble sleeping
- Trouble concentrating
How to Help Your Child With Anxiety
Treatment
The first step to helping your child with anxiety is to speak to your family doctor. They will help determine if your child has anxiety or if there is something else going on.
They can then refer you to a mental health specialist or programs to help your child deal with anxiety both at home and at school.
Mental health treatment may include cognitive-behavioral therapy, child therapy, and family therapy
Click here to learn more about cognitive-behavioral therapy!
Managing Symptoms
There are ways you can address your child’s anxiety without directly dealing with the symptoms. You can help your child manage their symptoms by encouraging a healthy lifestyle.
Try to implement a healthier eating plan that includes fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean protein sources.
Your child should also engage in physical activity at least 60 minutes per day and get plenty of sleep each night.
Calming Techniques
Calming techniques such as mindfulness and meditation are great ways to help your little one deal with anxiety. There are many apps and YouTube videos out there that can help.
You can also teach your child how to do belly breathing so they can address their anxious feelings as soon as they happen – in a way that is calming and discreet.
Try to encourage your child to also address their negative thoughts and change them into positive ones. For instance, if your child does not want to go to school, they may think: “I don’t like school. It’s too hard.”
They could instead think: “I get to have fun with my friends at school.”
Parental Support
When a child is dealing with anxiety, you are their first line of defense against this struggle. As a parent, it’s not only important for you to take steps to help with the anxiety but to provide them with support as well.
This includes being honest about your own anxieties (without going into too much detail) and modeling appropriate responses.
Providing parental support also means encouraging them when they attempt to deal with their anxiety. For instance, offering them praise or a small reward when they go to school or practice a technique such belly breathing.
What Not To Do If Your Child Has Anxiety
All parents mean well when helping their child deal with anxiety, but here are some things you should avoid doing:
- Don’t feed the anxiety. Your first instinct is to help your child but giving them attention and comfort when they are anxious may encourage anxious and avoidant behaviors. Instead, get them to practice a calming technique first and then address the situation.
- Don’t encourage avoidant behavior. Another instinct you may have is to have your child avoid the situations that make them anxious. However, this creates a cycle of anxiety that is hard to break.
- Don’t ask leading questions. As you’re trying to understand your child’s anxiety, don’t ask leading questions such as, “Are you anxious about the big test at school?” You don’t want to put the idea in their head that they should be anxious.
Helping Your Child With Anxiety
It’s hard to watch your child struggle with something like anxiety but addressing the situation now is going to help your child move beyond this challenge and develop healthy coping mechanisms that will benefit them into adulthood.
Does your child have anxiety? How do you help them out? Let us know in the comments!
