Angie Theriault

Disclosure: ChatGPT3 was used in the creation of this resource.

Summary

Anxiety, a prevalent emotional issue among children, can have lasting effects that extend into adulthood. While experiencing a normal level of fear and anxiety is part of the human experience, prolonged or unusually frequent anxiety becomes a concern. According to reasearch.com under education, it reports that up to 75% of students experience a harmful form of anxiety or depression. This mental illness can be traced back to a few causes. Some examples include having an overactive fear response system, genetic factors, or traumatic life events. Essentially, what this means is that someone has an oversized and/or irregular amount of fear or nervousness in their daily lives. Anxiety can have the ability to impair or damage individuals in many aspects of their lives if not diagnosed and treated.

There are different kinds and types of anxiety as well. They are all similar but also have distinct differences. Some to be aware of are Separation Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Selective Mutism, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and specific phobias. There is no way to describe all the different kinds of anxiety, and further research into a specific kind is needed by teachers to understand how to help their students. What may help ease one kind of anxiety might be a trigger or perceived as a threat in another.

The diagnosis of this can come from reading the behavior of the child mentally and physically. It can appear as not wanting to leave parents or trusted adults, having extreme fears over one specific thing (such as dogs or the dark), fear of social situations, frequent headaches, racing heart, or putting an unneeded amount of work into something with the looming fear of failure. 

As for treatment, there are many options. One includes a specific task called self-regulation, which is the process of working out emotions in a healthy way over time. An option for achieving this is letting the child face their fears incrementally more over an extended period until they are comfortable with said fear. Being uncomfortable is to be expected at first, seeing as it is a new skill. However, it will help the child gain confidence and resilience as they grow into the teenage and adult years. It will also prevent them from holding on to that anxiety for the rest of their lives and cause problems later on. Another way to help is to communicate with the child and help them learn the skill of talking things out. Letting the child express themselves and learn how to put their feelings into words will benefit them immensely. When they learn how to express themselves, they then can start to figure out why they are nervous or scared and work from that point. When talking about the anxiety and why it may have happened, validation is necessary and extremely important. However, the child will have a more difficult time moving on if the fear is never faced. One other option that could be considered is prescriptive medicine. There is not a “one-size-fits-all” prescription, so consulting with a medical professional is advised. This medicine will often act as a calming agent and help the child calm down when that fear kicks in. A medical provider will give enough medicine to help the child not be overwhelmed by the anxiety but also leave enough natural feelings to work through and think about the situation at hand. In severe cases, the medicine makes it possible for the child to function and live a healthy life. The fear does not disappear but the prescription helps ease it enough that it does not dominate the life of the child.

1. A. Practicing talking to someone until they can do it independently
2. B. A child is afraid of dogs but learning to look at pictures of dogs until touching one
3. C. Letting the child experience stress a little at a time
4. D. All of the Above

1. A. True
2. B. False

1. A. A child not wanting to leave a parent

2. B. A little girl constantly expressing her fear of bugs

3. C. A boy with an unusually high heart rate going to the doctors

4. D. A boy laughing with his friends

5. E. A child who is constantly nervous around new people

6. F. A child crying