Anxiety in Children
What is anxiety?
If your child is struggling with anxiety and you’re not sure how best to help them, arming yourself with key facts and general knowledge about anxiety will be the start of creating a plan of action to offer you and your child some confidence and direction.
Anxiety is normal. Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. It alerts us to threats, protects us from danger and helps us reach important goals.
Anxiety isn’t dangerous. Although anxiety feels uncomfortable, it is temporary and will eventually decrease. The body sensations we experience when we’re anxious, are designed to keep us safe.
Anxiety shouldn’t be avoided. It’s important to resist allowing your child to avoid challenges or escape scary situations. Your child may feel better in the short-term when they stay home or opt out, but in the long-term it makes things worse as your child never gets to learn they can handle the tuff-stuff.
Anxiety can take over. Although anxiety is normal, harmless, and part of everyday life, for some children it can take over. Anxiety can flood children with unpleasant physical feelings, unwanted thoughts, and result in avoidance or opting out of important routines such as playing a sport, making friends, going to school, and more.
How are thoughts, feelings, and actions connected?
When children are anxious, they feel it in their bodies (anxious feelings) and it affects what they think (anxious thoughts) and do (anxious actions).
If you’re not sure whether your child has an anxiety disorder or want to be more familiar with different types of childhood anxiety or anxiety-related problems, check out the descriptions below. Keep in mind, that it’s common for children to experience more than one anxiety theme.
Specific Phobias
Fears in childhood are normal. However, for some children, their fears can become very severe over time and develop into a phobia. A phobia is an intense and unreasonable fear of a specific object or situation. This means having an extreme anxiety response towards something that is not causing immediate danger.
Separation Anxiety Disorder
It’s normal for young children sometimes to feel worried or upset when separated from their parents or other important caregivers. Usually, such separation anxiety fades as they grow up, begin school, and gain confidence. For some children, their response to actual or anticipated separations is more extreme and continues beyond the first 1-2 years of school.
Social Anxiety Disorder
Children with social anxiety are overly anxious or nervous when meeting new people or in situations where they’re being observed by others. They are extremely worried that they may do something embarrassing, or others will think badly of them.
Selective Mutism
Selective mutism is predominantly a childhood anxiety disorder that is diagnosed when a child consistently does not speak in some situations, but speaks comfortably in other situations.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Children with GAD experience excessive and uncontrollable worry about future events and minor matters. This can include worry about health of self and family, schoolwork and tests, friendships, the environment, natural disasters, being on time, making mistakes, safety, and more.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
PTSD can develop after being directly involved, witnessing, or learning about a frightening, traumatic event. This disorder can be extremely debilitating for the child and is far more than simply being upset for a few days after a scary event. Symptoms include ongoing upsetting vivid memories, nightmares, flashbacks of the event, increased arousal such as being jumpy or irritable, and avoiding reminders of the incident.
How can you help your child to manage anxiety?
If your child is struggling with anxiety and you’re not sure how best to help them, arming yourself with key facts and general knowledge about anxiety will be the start of creating a plan of action to offer you and your child some confidence and direction.
M.A.P (My Anxiety Plan) for Children
(MAP) is a self-paced anxiety management program based on cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT).
Take the M.A.P for Children course
Want to try practising Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) with your child?
Download our MindShift CBT app
How about watching a video about anxiety with your child?
Watch our videos on different types of anxiety and OCD here.
This video teaches kids how anxiety is a normal biological response – called “Fight, Flight, Freeze” – that can get triggered inappropriately in the modern world.
#OurAnxietyStories – The Anxiety Canada Podcast
#Ouranxietystories (OAS) welcomes guests from all walks of life to share their personal stories about anxiety and related disorders, like OCD. OAS podcasts provide education, insight, and inspiration.
Dr. Lynn Miller is a leader in mental health issues of school-aged children. Lynn was the President of the Anxiety Disorders Association of Canada from 2010-2014 and 2018-2019.
In this interview, she shares how her work as a school teacher inspired her to go back to school to study anxiety, “the most pressing problem of school kids today”.