Video Transcript
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health conditions that is currently impacting children and adults, especially something that is impacting kids during this time. A lot of children are experiencing increased worries, increased concerns regarding different things. And one of the things that are important for parents to be aware of is that anxiety can manifest itself in a variety of ways for different children. The most common is children expressing increased worries, concerns about things, maybe asking frequent questions about things that they may already know the answer to, but maybe seeking that extra validation.
Another thing that parents may notice is that children may have some hesitation or want to avoid certain places or things. And have difficulty with that. Children may also start to have a decrease in concentration, which might be impacting their schoolwork or ability to complete tasks that they weren’t able to do prior to the different things that have been happening in this past year.
And one other thing that parents may notice is that children may start to report different physical symptoms that the child might say if they’re experiencing like stomach aches, headaches, things that have been rolled out. And here has been no medical condition that has been reported when the children are often taken to the doctor and they might come up when children are going to a certain situation that may cause some increased anxiety.
A lot of things that parents can do to ease some of the anxiety can be just giving them extra information as to where they may be going, maybe setting up some structure for them, and validating their feelings. That way they’re not feeling as though these worries or concerns aren’t going to be addressed. A common treatment that can be provided for children who are experiencing anxiety is cognitive behavior therapy, also known as CBT and through the use of CBT parents will learn different strategies that they can use to help their children, and especially allowing the children to learn different coping strategies that they can use as well, to be able to calm themselves down, be able to decrease some of those worries, be able to confirm when things are real danger versus when things are okay.
Medication can also be something that might be referred to, that might be suggested if typical CBT is not working, or if the children are experiencing increased distress and parents aren’t able to facilitate certain things to help them. If you have more questions one thing that you can do is definitely contact us. We can set up an initial consultation to see if your child is experiencing worries that are out of the norm and be able to give you additional information on how to treat your child and how to be able to provide them with additional support that they need, especially during these times. Thank you.