Childhood anxiety is evident when children and adolescents worry more than their peers about school performance, sports progress, appearance, and popularity. If the child has grown up with overly anxious parents, the tendency will be exacerbated. Even fairly calm and relaxed children can become tense and anxious teens if parents convey their own fears and anxieties about their children’s performance on a regular basis.
Children who are growing up in a fairly relaxed family environment may just seem like ideal students, and parents may even count their blessings that their son or daughter does their homework without being scolded for it. The highly anxious child will be a perfectionist and will require an excessive amount of reassurance about her performance. While we all love it when our kids come home with an A, it’s vital to watch for signs of anxiety that accompany their schoolwork. A child who worries and even cries over an assignment in elementary (elementary) school, cannot automatically be diagnosed with generalized anxiety, or indeed anxiety problems. However, it is good for parents to control such reactions. Children and adolescents with generalized anxiety may also worry about punctuality, their appearance, or impending catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, meteorites flying to Earth, and nuclear war.
Obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors
If you notice that your son is excessively neat, send him to my house. I kid, of course, because we accept our kids even when they missed out on the neat gene like mine seems to have. However, excessive concern for the order of the room, or for how clothes are arranged in a drawer, are signs that say two things. First, it turns out that you have a neat and tidy son. Second, the degree to which they care about order will let you know if that often-sought-after trait is actually a sign of their underlying anxiety. This article is not about obsessive compulsive disorder as it is known. But it is important to mention that all obsessive thoughts and compulsive or ritualistic behaviors are based on anxiety. Keep those socks exactly 1 inch (2.5 cm) from each other, have all the white shirts together, make and remake the bed; those behaviors are used to keep the underlying feeling of anxiety at bay.
Signs of anxiety in children.
In many ways, anxiety is easier to diagnose in children than in adults because they haven’t yet learned to self-censor. If they feel anxious about giving a talk at school, or even going to school, children will tell their parents or caregivers. In fact, many anxiety-prone children will communicate their fears very clearly and sometimes alarmingly. The important thing for the environment of the child or adolescent with anxiety is that we show solidarity without being facilitators. By that I mean that as parents, older siblings, or friends, we must treat the very real fear that the child is expressing with respect. The command to “get out of it” or the advice that “there’s nothing to be afraid of, goose” may make you feel good, but it will only make the anxious person more fearful. They will be less likely to open up to you when their anxiety increases. So please don’t trivialize fears. As far as enabling, what I mean is that some parents, when faced with an obviously anxious child, start to become overprotective. They keep the child away from school camps and sometimes even from school.
Keep a diary for three months.
For one, most of you can easily diagnose whether or not your child’s anxiety switch is on overload. It is the subtlety of some behaviors that can allow anxiety to go undiagnosed and untreated for years. Most of my counseling clients talk about being anxious in school and being more anxious in general in their childhood. However, none of them were treated for anxiety. While I certainly don’t want to suggest that the child who expresses concern and apprehension about giving a talk to the class has an anxiety disorder and needs treatment, it might be in your interest to keep a small journal of how your child reacts in other situations. situations If it is a very common and punctual fear of public speaking, your agenda will remain blank. If not, you will have good material to discuss with a therapist if you decide to do that intervention.
Having said that many of my counseling clients were anxious children, it is also important to say that anxious children outgrow their anxiety in the vast majority of cases.
