Five easy to miss signs your child is anxious and how to help!

Have you noticed an increase in challenging behaviors since COVID started? Perhaps there have been more meltdowns and tantrums. Perhaps your kiddo has just seemed on edge, like the smallest little things set them off. Or maybe it’s been hard to get them to focus on school or even a small task, like getting ready to go out to play. Or maybe they just aren’t listening anymore (or never really have). It’s easy to think of these things as behavioral problems and common to try to solve them through parenting strategies, like “time-ins”, boundaries, limit setting, and collaborative problem solving.

But what if these things are simply symptoms of a larger problem? What if underneath that anger or misbehavior is something else that no amount of limits or consequences will solve.

I’m talking about ANXIETY.

Anxiety is a feeling of fear, worry or unease and for us adults it can be pretty easy to tell when we are feeling anxious. And while anxiety is the most commonly diagnosed childhood mental health disorder, it isn’t always easy to spot in kids, because it shows up differently. Today I want to talk to you about anxiety in kids and help you get clear on what that looks like, how we might be missing it, and then in the next post I will give you practical tips for what we can do to help our kids when they are dealing with it, even if our kids are generally resistant to our help and assistance. I am going to share with you mindfulness tools that help with anxiety that in a way makes it palatable and easy for the strong-willed kids that we have.

Now, sometimes anxiety is easy to spot in our kids, like if they are worried about something or they are anxious or nervous. They might be scared for us to leave, they might be worried about monsters or bad bad dreams they are having. They might be biting their nails or twisting their hair or chewing their hair. Those are the things that we can look out for, visible things that we can see but anxiety doesn’t always show up in these more classic ways. Sometimes anxiety in kids looks like misbehavior or anger, and if we try to deal with those things without dealing with the underlying cause, anxiety, then we are really only treating the symptom, and not the root cause: anxiety.

Here are five easy to miss signs that your child may be experiencing anxiety.

Anger

There are some signs that often are harder to recognize and that is because they look like something else. One of them probably the hardest to see is anger or irritability.

All folks who are experiencing anxiety have the possibility of having irritability as one of their symptoms; even adults can be irritable when they are anxious. (yup…guilty!)

If you are seeing this in your kids, that chronic irritability or quick flashes of anger that seem to come out of nowhere, that can be one sign that they are managing a lot of stress and worries and their self-regulation reservoir is running low. This makes it hard to be flexible and easily handle life’s daily stressors.

Defiance, Refusal and Avoidance

Saying “no”, refusing to do what we ask, refusing to do things that are new to them or that they struggle with, avoiding new situations; these are all things that can seem behavioral but may actually have to do with worries or fears that they might be having in these situations.

Refusal or avoidance are big signs that your kids are struggling with something related to anxiety. If that’s happening a lot slow down and get curious about what they may be feeling or thinking in those moments.

Aches and Pains

Your kids also might be displaying some psychosomatic symptoms. These are unexplained physical complaints that have to do with our mental and emotional state. Things like stomach pains, having a headache, muscles hurting or trouble sleeping.

Getting kids in touch with how their body is doing, how their body is feeling and helping them understand that our bodies are very good at letting us know when something is wrong and that’s a GOOD thing. It’s our body’s way of helping us pay attention, slow down, and take care of ourselves.

Lack of focus

When our fight-or-flight system is activated we are constantly scanning our environment for danger and for information that we need in order to survive. This is a basic survival function of our fight or flight system and chronic anxiety can trigger that system. So it’s really hard to be focused and pay attention to things when we are in fight-or-flight or experiencing anxiety. Not being able to focus on schoolwork or getting easily distracted is very common.

We can help our kids by slowing down and helping them figure out what they need to feel safe and calm so that they can focus. Grounding exercises can be really helpful for this. Good ones include noticing one thing with each of your five senses: sight, taste, touch, smell, & sound.

Sadness or clinginess

In some kids instead of getting angry or irritable when they are at the end of their rope they get sad and seek out connection and snuggles. If you are pushing down your anxiety or managing new stressors, it can really be exhausting and that can look a lot like depression or sadness. And when kids feel overwhelmed and dysregulated and go to a sad place, they often want their attachment figure, their parent or caregiver, to help them through that with snuggles or play.

Clinginess can also be a part of this, where they do not want you to go or leave the room, they do not want you to run to the store, they do not want you to go upstairs, they do want to be alone by themselves. Those are all signs that they might be experiencing some anxiety.

Anxiety manifesting as sadness like that often makes us want to connect with them and hold them. Those kids are lucky. Those kids whose anxiety manifest in a more angry and irritable way, those are unlucky kids that are at risk for being rejected, but it’s all the same underlying thing: anxiety, worry, fear. So if we happen to have a kid that gets angry and irritable it’s so important that we remember to soften toward them, just like we would if they were getting sad.

If you’re looking for a way to bring a bit more compassion to your family, my free guided Self-Compasison meditation is designed to be used with kids (my kids even helped me write it!). Grab your copy here:

Let me know if you have any questions! If you want to get more support, be sure to join my free Balanced Parenting Community on Facebook!