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How do I help a child with anxiety?


Gobblygook
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My 11 year old daughter has had some minor anxiety for a few years, but it seems like it is getting worse. With the pandemic and widespread civil unrest just a few miles away, as well as the usual summer storms and most recently, a spurt of property crime in our neighborhood that directly impacted us, it is really starting to affect her. She wakes up frequently with bad dreams and is unable to get back to sleep for hours, thinking that someone is breaking into our house (our vehicle was vandalized in our driveway last week.) She panics at the possibility of a thunderstorm and frequently checks the radar. Usually very extroverted, she melted down when I tried to drop her off at an outdoor soccer camp earlier this summer, saying there were too many people, and she didn’t feel safe. She seems extra sensitive to noise. She is also keenly aware of some difficult family dynamics that affect her deeply. 

How do I even go about helping her amid COVID? She has a sibling who is at high-risk for respiratory complications, so we have been very careful in our exposure. I think the root cause of her not feeling safe physically is because she doesn’t feel safe emotionally due to the family dynamics, which I have tried to compensate for and change for many years, but over which I ultimately have very little control. 

Edited by Gobblygook
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The most helpful thing will probably be cognitive behavioral therapy. You can do that remotely.

Faith if your family is religious.  Pray Psalm 91 if you're Jewish or Christian. Similarly, she's probably old enough to read the book Boundaries.

You can help her simplify her room.  If it's minimal and orderly she'll feel more in control of the things she can control, and more confident about herself.

You can get her some noise-cancelling headphones, even cheap foam earplugs, or both.  Even the cheap ones from Harbor Freight ($12-15 on sale, $20 full price) can reduce loud noises.

She can spend some time outside in nature every morning before doing anything else.  Going for a brisk 30 minute walk in the sunshine has been shown to be more effective than antidepressants.  Prayer, meditation, or breathing exercises can also do similar things for stress.  Slow deep breaths lower cortisol.  If you have to get in the car as a family and drive to a park in a safer neighborhood, fine.  If you have to all go to stay together, fine.  Generally criminals active at night will be gone by the time the sun is down but the others will make her feel safer.

Make sure she's getting dressed every day, even if you're not going anywhere.  Something other than sweats or leggings.

Watch something funny every day.  Deep, belly laughter relieves stress too.

Do something creative or something that gives her joy every day.

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I have a child diagnosed and treated for severe OCD at about that age. (I’m not suggesting this is what your daughter has!) It is an anxiety disorder. The most effective things for her, in addition to medication (which saved our family), have been using the Breathe app (Headspace, something similar) and the right counseling.  I can’t emphasize the counseling enough. 

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In addition to the above suggestions, you might teach her some mindfulness techniques. There is a book/CD combo that our pediatrician recommended, and which we used for awhile. All of my kids liked to listen to it, actually, even though it was intended to help just one of them. The CD has many tracks of varying lengths; you listen to a soothing voice talk you through relaxation techniques. It's something that you can get into a routine of doing together, every night before bed, and she could keep the CD in her room and listen to it in the middle of the night, if needed. These mindfulness techniques are geared for children and don't have any religious bent.

https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Still-Like-Frog-Mindfulness/dp/1611800587/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=sitting+still+like+a+frog&qid=1600785780&sr=8-1

Edited by Storygirl
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Oh yeah, there are free storm spotting classes online, so she can learn the difference, both by sight and by radar, between the rare dangerous storms and the common summer thunderstorms.

And you might have her evaluated not just for anxiety, but for situational depression.

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I have two kids with severe anxiety, one of whose started kind of suddenly and was at least partially related to ptsd related to sounds.  Things that have helped us:  vitamin D supplementation (it was genuinely deficient, not just "not optimal"), noise canceling headphones, counseling, and eventually meds.  I wish we had started the meds earlier, but we had a strong family history of anxiety and excellent response to ssri meds.  

 

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A lot of kids who were getting by before (with supplements, with mindfulness, with strategies) got overwhelmed with covid. I suggest you call your doctor and ask for a med. When she gets it physically under control a bit with the med, she'll be in a better place to try the other strategies. There are non-SSRI options like Buspar that can be taken just as needed. So she takes the med, gets it under control, starts the CBT and mindfulness, then she decides how much she needs and what mix.

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You have an unhealthy dynamic day to day in the home she is exposed to?  That is extra hard if it's true.  

That said, my daughter had about 6 months of grinding anxiety right around 10-11.  Both my kids tend to be a little anxious and overthinkers anyway.  It was after an illness and I feel like that triggered some stuff but it didn't present like PANDAS at all (which might be worth looking into if this was a sudden change).   We did family outdoor exercise time daily.  We talked about and very methodically worked on strategies.  We followed up with the pediatrician just to make sure everything else looked good.  We did good multivitamins and probiotics daily.  Watched processed carb/sugar intake.  Careful bed time routines with a shower.  We baby stepped back toward activities she had enjoyed previously.  For her it definitely ended up being a phase and we didn't have to do further therapy/meds but we were most definitelyprepared to do so.  I know kids who really needed those additional steps.  

Having gone through this, I felt like it was really important to keep things moving.  I felt like I had to be always firm and loving and rational ("I know this seems scary, but let me talk you through this").  Any middle of the night interactions I tried to keep to as few whispered words as possible and didn't .  My kids had a friend that struggled for several years until his parents really got pushy about therapy, meds, baby stepping. He barely left his house for over a year.  And I know we're ALL having that year.  But finding some ways to get out of your house safely just a little bit at a time (going for a drive, walking, biking, etc) might be good.  Regular exercise is so helpful for all the gear grinders over here.   

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9 hours ago, Katy said:

Going for a brisk 30 minute walk in the sunshine has been shown to be more effective than antidepressants.

Katy, I really loved your whole post, but I think this bit needs some context. The studies comparing exercise to antidepressants found exercise to be just as effective as medication for mild to moderate depression. Anxiety is a whole other issue, for which antidepressants are often very helpful. 

Trust me when I say my OCD would not have been overcome with a 30 minute walk every day. 🙂 

Edited by MercyA
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4 hours ago, MercyA said:

Katy, I really loved your whole post, but I think this bit needs some context. The studies comparing exercise to antidepressants found exercise to be just as effective as medication for mild to moderate depression. Anxiety is a whole other issue, for which antidepressants are often very helpful. 

Trust me when I say my OCD would not have been overcome with a 30 minute walk every day. 🙂 

I totally agree OCD wouldn't be overcome by a walk.  But if it's situational depression presenting as anxiety a walk might make a huge difference.  It can't hurt to try.  Nature even has pretty strong effects on things like PTSD.

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I agree with counseling, etc, bu will also offer that a simple thing that helped when one of mine was going through periods of very high anxiety was for me to take something like the weather and say "Today I will be the weather watcher. I'll be keeping an eye on the radar so you don't have to. If there's severe weather, I'll let you know. Our plan is _____"  It's not a long term solution, but sometimes it helped ease the burden.

 

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