*Flashback Friday*

This post originally appeared on The PediaBlog on August 20, 2019.

 

Tip Of The Iceberg

 

 

The nervous energy is starting to build up as children get ready to return to school after what was hopefully a fun and relaxing summer. To be a little anxious before the first day of school should be expected. Sometimes this nervousness is readily apparent to observant parents and teachers, and kids can be reassured until the daily routines of school are re-established and the acute stress fades away. For other children who are feeling nervous, the anxiety may just be the tip of the iceberg, with the underlying emotions they really feel but have a hard time expressing hidden from view. Renee Jain says the tip of that iceberg itself may be lurking below the surface as well, deepening the mystery behind the despair:

[T]here’s a huge assumption that parents can actually recognize that tip of the iceberg or look at a child’s behavior and say, “Yup, that’s anxiety.” Here’s the reality: anxious behavior in children is not uniform.

Your child might ask repetitive questions for reassurance and no matter how many times you answer, the question repeats. You might have the perfect child at school that comes home and constantly picks fights with you or siblings. You may have a child that can’t focus, motivate, or even loses sleep at night. Or maybe your child is downright angry. Anxiety, in fact, can manifest in a multitude of forms.

 

Jain lists eight behaviors that can masquerade as anxiety. The first is common for people of all ages:

Difficulty Sleeping

Anxiety and sleep problems have a chicken and egg connection. Research has shown that anxiety can lead to sleep disorders and chronic sleep disruption can lead to anxiety. In children, having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep is one of the hallmark characteristics of anxiety. In many kids, trains of anxious thoughts keep them awake long after they should be asleep. Others have anxiety about falling asleep, thinking they will miss their alarm or be tired in the morning.

 

Anger and defiance, often manifested as temper tantrums, annoying whining, mean and disrespectful comments and hurtful actions, can shine a spotlight on a young child’s anxiety. Overplanning is the other side of the coin:

Where anxiety can cause some children to try to take back control through defiant behavior, it can cause others to overplan for situations where planning is minimal or unnecessary. A child with anxiety who has been invited to a friend’s birthday party may not only plan what they will wear and what gift to take, they will ask questions about who else will be there, what they will be doing, when their parent will pick them up, what they should do if someone at the party has an allergy, who to call if they get nervous or uncomfortable, who they can talk to while they are there… Preparing for every possibility is a way a child with anxiety takes control of an uncontrollable situation.

 

When the behavior parents are witnessing in their child is out of proportion to the circumstance that provoked it, there is a term for that:

Chandeliering

To borrow a term from renowned social scientist, Brené Brown, chandeliering is when a seemingly calm person suddenly flies off the handle for no reason. In reality, they have pushed hurt and anxiety so deep for so long that a seemingly innocent comment or event suddenly sends them straight through the chandelier. A child who goes from calm to a full-blown tantrum without a reason is often ill-equipped to talk about their anxiety and tries to hide it instead. After days or even weeks of appearing “normal” on the surface, these children will suddenly reach a point where they cannot hide their anxious feelings anymore and have a disproportionate reaction to something that triggers their anxiety.

 

Jain says children who are anxious may have difficulty concentrating at home and at school, occasionally leading to a mistaken diagnosis of ADHD. Avoidance is another strategy anxious children use; typically, it backfires:

Children who are trying to avoid a particular person, place or task often end up experiencing more of whatever it is they are avoiding. If schoolwork is the source of a kid’s anxiety, they will go to great lengths to avoid it and in the process end up having to do more to make up for what they missed. They will have also spent time and energy on avoiding it in the process, making it the source of greater anxiety in the end.

 

Nobody likes a “Negative Nellie,” which can be a big clue when children are feeling anxious:

From a neurological standpoint, people with anxiety tend to experience negative thoughts at a much greater intensity than they do positive ones. As a result, negative thoughts tend to take hold faster and easier than positive ones, making someone with anxiety seem like a downer all of the time. Children with anxiety are especially prone to these patterns because they have not yet developed the ability to recognize a negative thought for what it is and turn it around by engaging in positive self-talk.

 

An anxious teenager can be a tough nut to crack to get to the root of their distress. More about that tomorrow on The PediaBlog.

 

(Google Images/GoZen)

 

source http://www.thepediablog.com/2021/08/20/flashback-friday-168/