What is it?

Anxiety is a universal, everyday emotional experience which occurs when we perceive threat. It’s therefore not unusual for children to feel anxious at times and is in fact a common part of development. However, for some children anxiety can be a heightened and intense experience which interferes with everyday life and functioning. What does it look like?

What does it look like?

Firstly, it is important to remember everyone’s experience of anxiety is different. There are many reasons why a child may experience anxiety.

Anxiety is a full-body experience:

• Physiological: breathing difficulties, muscle tension, sweating, nausea.
• Cognitive: preoccupation and patterns of thinking, inattention and confusion, perfectionism
• Emotional: distressed, fearful, sensitive, crying
• Behavioural: safety behaviours, such as avoidance, seeking reassurance, or school refusal

In children, anxiety may present as:

• Inattentiveness, difficulty concentrating
• Poor sleep habits, especially waking in the night
• Reduced appetite
• Agitative or irritable, with emotional outbursts
• Low affect and negative thoughts
• Feeling tense, fidgeting
• Frequent or repetitive questioning
• Isolation and avoidance
• Fatigue
• Psychosomatic complaints

How can we help children manage their anxiety?

The first step toward helping your child manage their anxiety is understanding what causes it. This can be challenging as triggers are not always discernible, or there’s a myriad of factors at play. The second step is knowing your child’s signs of distress.

Some helpful tips and tricks below:

• Validation and normalisation: encourage your child to talk about their feelings, listen empathetically and acknowledge their fears and concerns. Do not dismiss or ignore. It can also be helpful to acknowledge the anxious thought and counter it with a positive one.
• The basics: healthy eating and sleep habits, plenty of water, time for free play and exercise
• Practising the anxious situation/desensitisation, and praise them for engaging in anxiety provoking situations
• Seeking a professional: psychologist’s are well-equipped with numerous strategies and interventions to assist your child with their anxiety
• Encourage positive thinking: children with anxiety are prone to unhelpful thinking patterns such as catastrophising
• Relaxation and sensory strategies: deep breaths, deep touch pressure, engaging in favourite activity, movement, a safe sensory space of sensory tool box

A guide to anxiety for kids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfSbWc3O_5M