I am seeing more and more children with anxiety, fears and worries. I have seen a couple of children in the past week who have experienced panic attacks – it’s pretty scary stuff. How did we get to live in a world where children have so many fears and anxiety?
It is ruining childhoods as it is stopping children doing what they should be relaxed about. It is having a negative effect on their friendships, their relationship with parents and their schoolwork, (amongst other areas of their lives). The children I have been seeing need coping strategies. They need to understand the fear and receive cognitive behaviour coaching. Their anxiety is not so crippling that they need a therapist I am pleased to say and we work on the fears and worries before they get bigger and dictate their life.
Children Having Panic Attacks
The numbers are growing though and whereas most of the children I saw a year ago wanted to talk about friendships this year its about fears, which also can include friends too. I found an article on panic attacks, which talks about the rise of anxiety in children and what they are worrying about. We may think these are trivial things as we probably did not worry about any of the items on the list when we were a child. I can see why children do nowadays. So much pressure and the need to succeed in everything. Social media is also another factor that’s fuelling children’s anxiety.
Anxiety is very real for children and we need to get children talking about what their fears are and finding a way to reduce those fears with them. As it rightly says in the article finding outside help may be the way to go. Let’s not dismiss our children fears. Let’s try and get the stats down of children having panic attacks by talking to our children and not being afraid to do so.
If you need some help with addressing your child’s anxiety please call me for a chat on 07961312749.
