When is Anxiety a problem?

Anxiety only becomes a problem if it causes excessive distress and significant inference in your child or teens life. It may have now become a ‘false alarm’ that is triggered at any sign of a situation that your child or teen sees as worrying or scary, even if the threat has passed or was never really there. Although some fears are common in children at certain stages in their life, if they do not grow out of these fears, they can become more not less anxious as they grow up.

This article provides six in depth signs that your child’s anxiety is problematic to help guide you.

Six signs that your child’s anxiety is problematic:

1. Significantly interferes with their life

Anxiety has become a problem if it significantly interferes or disrupts your child’s life. This disruption can interrupt or even stop them from completing developmentally appropriate tasks for their age such as going to school and mixing with other children.

If your child or teens anxiety has persisted and is affecting their everyday life, then their anxiety has now become problematic. Are they are constantly worrying, avoiding activities they used to enjoy, or if it is affecting they’re sleeping, eating or interacting with friends? Is it difficult to do things as a family as you used to due to your child’s anxiety or are your structuring family life around your anxious child?

If they're getting frequently distressed and they're avoiding entering situations that would be appropriate for their age, this is means their anxiety is beginning to become problematic. You may also see the following emotional and behaviour changes.

2. More emotional outbursts

Children often express anxiety differently depending on their age and personality. Some may be seen as quiet, compliant and go unnoticed by their peers, teachers or peers. Other children display angry, difficult, immature behaviour and are seen as disruptive. It is important to remember that anxiety can look different for children and teens of different ages and anxiety can often present as anger.

Anxious children experience more stress than other children as they constantly view events in their lives as worrying or scary. This means that the limit of their stress levels are reached far quicker than their peers and they reach their ‘tipping point’ far more easily. This results in your child displaying angry outbursts, irritability, shouting, crying and often full on meltdowns or tantrums, more often than their peers.

3. Constant reassurance seeking

It is natural for your child or teen to seek reassurance from their parents when they are feeling worried or scared, or if they are learning something new. However, anxious children often depend on this excessively, much more than their peers. They often ask the same questions repeatedly even if this reassurance has already been given. They can they can demand comfort in situations that are not threatening, often ask their parents to do things for them or want their parents to be available just in case they need them. This may also occur alongside other regressive behaviours such as bed wetting or thumb sucking.

This can lead to over dependence on reassurance seeking which can become a habit that that they cannot cope without. Although reassurance seeking provides short term relief from anxiety in the short term and makes your child feel better, it does not enable them to learn how to cope and solve problems for themselves, so it keeps anxiety going in the long term.

4. Increase in physical symptoms

Anxiety is an emotion that is felt in the body and is part of the normal biological fear response. It triggers your child’s ‘fight or flight’ system, which leads to lots of physical changes in their body. This explains why anxious children complain of regular tummy aches and nausea (which may lead to a lack of appetite), headaches or muscle aches, which when they occur over a long period are exhausting.  These bodily changes can be uncomfortable, can come out of the blue and can be scary for some children to experience. It helpful to recognise that frequent physical symptoms (if occurring with other signs) may actually be a physical manifestation of anxiety.

5. Excessive worrying and sleep problems

Anxious children often worry excessively and to the extreme. They expect the worse the happen, worry about more things and in more extreme ways than their peers. It is difficult for anxious children to control their worry and switch them off, even at night time. They continue to worry but they have no one to talk their worries through with and cannot distract or dismiss their worries as easily as they can in the daytime, their worrying continues. This worrying then triggers the fear response and they begin to feel more alert and on edge. All of these factors may it very difficult for children to sleep as their mind and body is now alert for danger. As a result anxiety can prevent children from having restful and restorative sleep and may lead to sleep problems in the long term.

6. Avoidance, refusal and rigid behaviours

One of the most common behaviours in child or teens with anxiety is their reluctance to try new things or refusing to go places to reduce feelings or anxiety or panic. Although this is a helpful strategy when faced with real danger, such as a large, snarling dog, when there is no real danger it prevents your child from learning to cope with challenging situations or attempting things that are outside their comfort zone. This leads them to develop a lack of confidence in their abilities and can set up a vicious circle when they are less likely to try new things in future, so withdraw further from their family and peer group. They may develop more rigid behaviours such as excessively planning, living by rules or controlling areas of their lives.

I hope this article was useful is identifying is your child’s anxiety is now a problem. The more informed you are about anxiety the more empowered you’ll feel to support your child or teen and know when to seek further help.