Parenting: Find Out If Your Kid has Anxiety! (#parenting)(#eduvictors)

Parenting: Find Out If Your Kid has Anxiety!

Manoneet becomes panic a day before examination and starts yelling that he does not remember anything. All the important formulae he learned has forgotten. It is estimated that 5% to 20% of urban kids suffer from depression or anxiety. It is good if these signs and symptoms get identified as early to get a timely treatment. All kids are moody and it is difficult to judge how much stress they have. There is no harm in consulting a child psychologist.

How to identify the signs?

Getting anxious in a day-to-day life is bit natural. However, if the same anxiety persists for days and weeks and your child gets anxious even at random or non-threatening situations, then it could be a symptom of an anxiety disorder.  Change in mood, sleeping pattern, getting difficulty in concentrating, becoming irritatable or sad, change in eating habits - especially the changed behaviour lasts most of the day or persists most of the days in a week, possibly it means something is stressing him/her out. An anxiety disorder is a persistent feeling of worry, nervousness, fear and anticipation. You may notice your child has started expressing apprehensions about attending schools or playing with friends which are used to enjoy earlier. These symptoms help you suspect the presence of some sort of anxiety order.

Talk to your child calmly with love.

credits:pixabay (Johnhain)

Kids are exposed to new learnings and experiences every day. Extreme pressure from various things like examination, homework, competition among friends, an onset of puberty etc. often leads to the start of anxiety to cope up with stress. Talk to you child softly and gently. It should not be a two-minute talk just before the examination or seeing him/her off to school. It should be distraction less. Do not ask binary questions rather these should be open-ended. Give your child a chance to share his/her feelings. Teach your child that worry is a normal thing. Teach him to calm down techniques like breathing exercise or yoga to deal with anxiety. Don’t push your opinions on your children. Express your love and tell your kid that you are always there to help him/her.

Media (TV, Social Media) adds to Anxiety

A lot of good and bad is happening in our neighbourhood. Unfortunately, our news channels for their vested interests highlight bad things too much. It could be a terrorist attack, mob lynching, demonstration, floods, robberies, fires, frivolous emails or messages or WhatsApp texts etc. impacting the kids and inducing scary thoughts too. Do talk about such incidents and reassure your kids that these mishappenings are unusual and already safety measures have been taken.

Help your kids to cope up with bad emotions. Help them to develop self-confidence, interests and follow their dreams.

See also:
Bhatia M S, Goyal A. Anxiety disorders in children and adolescents: Need for early detection. J Postgrad Med [serial online] 2018 [cited 2018 Oct 9];64:75-6.

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