Anxiety: 5 ways to help your children
Many parents often wonder how it is possible for a tiny person to become anxious. Experts say that children, like adults, can experience anxiety at any age in life.
Anxiety is a feeling of emotional or physical tension that can be caused by an event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry or nervous. It is actually a normal reaction of a person's body in the face of a challenge, and in short bursts, anxiety can be positive (such as when it helps us avoid danger or complete a task within a deadline). But when stress lasts for a long time, it can damage our health.
What causes anxiety in a child?
Many factors can cause stress in a child, such as school or social environment. Also major life changes that may be caused by a divorce, a move or even a major loss of a loved one are stressors. The stress of a parent can also cause stress in children, but the biggest risk to children is modern lifestyles. According to the American Psychological Association, teenagers today are just as stressed as adults, but even young children are more stressed than we think.
Is my child experiencing stress?
Anxiety in children is often difficult to identify as they usually "somatise" it. So childhood anxiety often appears with a physical symptom, for example a child may report feeling unwell or having frequent headaches and stomach aches (assuming anything abnormal has been ruled out by their doctor). If again these symptoms worsen before a test, this means that the child may be experiencing anxiety.
We may again notice negative changes in the child's behavior such as:
- Sleep disturbances
- Nightmares
- Frequent headaches, stomach aches (without pathological cause)
