The physical symptoms of anxiety in children often appear as headaches, muscle tensions, sweating, restlessness and stomach aches. The feeling can cause fear and worry and lead to misapprehension of situations or events. It can lead to depression and an antipathy towards both school and family life. Anxiety in children can occur for any number of reasons; worrying about school work, fear of a phobia, bullying, pressure from home or even a secret weighing heavily on their conscience such as abuse. The symptoms are then reinforced by the child reiterating negative thoughts in their mind and by taking actions to avoid fearful situations which in turn give the fear strength to grow.
The responses of others to these fears can further increase the trauma and stress of the situation. The child can then suffer from feelings of guilt and shame and often resolves to never reveal their fears again. Children can easily feel worthless and inadequate if their fears are laughed at, scorned or worse, not even believed. The adult in this type of situation should listen to the reasons for anxiety and be supportive, releasing the power that the fear has over the child by expressing ways in which it can be overcome and made less important. The anxiety in children needs to be released before it can cause too much damage.
Problems Resulting From Anxiety in Children
Anxiety in children can cause a multitude of problems in later life if left unattended. Adults often make the fear and anxiety in their children worse by responding inappropriately to their needs and thus reinforcing the bad feelings that have occurred. The most basic problem that can result from anxiety in children is the fear and avoidance of every day and also difficult situations. The child suffers from so much anxiety that they will avoid this feeling at all costs and eventually run away from all of their problems, making choices based on their fears and in some cases using alcohol, food or drugs as a crutch. Numerous studies have shown how anxiety in children can lead to poor results in school and an entire lack of ambition in later life for fear of failure.
In a lot of cases, anxiety in children leads to the child avoiding anything involving pressure which can end up in them being isolated, skipping school or joining in with socially irresponsible groups. They may end up expressing their fear through anger and by blaming others. Those that blame themselves for their inadequacies can end up feeling depressed and unconfident. Anxiety in children is very common and can lead to other disorders in later life. It needs to be dealt with as soon as possible with the child left feeling secure and happy. More often than not, a number of situations will gather up the anxiety levels in a child and such ongoing feelings of anxiety can be very hard to dissuade and could need therapeutic or medicated treatment.
