The Children's Center for OCD and Anxiety is pleased to announce our next training workshop on Friday Oct 24th entitled 3 levels of family involvement in CBT treatment of child anxiety: Education, coaching and improving relationships. Contact us for more information.
A free child anxiety study is being conducted to determine whether anxious children between the ages of 6 and 12 and their mothers can benefit from a Cognitive-Behavioral Skills-Based Program delivered over the Internet. Contact (310) 206-1128 or UCLAchildanxiety@gmail.com.
Welcome!
Does your child suffer from
excessive fears and anxieties?
Anxiety is the number one mental health problem
in America; conservative estimates suggest that 13% of children and
adolescents suffer from an anxiety disorder. If you are the
parent of one of the millions of children who suffer from excessive
fears and anxieties, we're here to help.
While it can be heart breaking to see children feel so afraid in ordinary
situations, never has there been more hope for their bright future.
With proper intervention, child anxiety can be
tackled head on and overcome, helping children avoid a lifetime of suffering.
Parents can do some of this work themselves, or can seek professional
help that will allow your child to approach and engage in the world
rather than run away from it.
How can we help your anxious child?
Our mission is to improve the quality of life
for anxious children and their families by providing parents,
educators and mental health professionals with comprehensive, user-friendly
information on the full range of anxiety disorders. Because children
may be secretive about their worries and suffer in silence, our goal
is to help adults who care about kids to be on the lookout for red flags.
We offer information about treatment
options, kid-friendly explanations
for the mechanisms that create and maintain anxiety, parenting
do's and don'ts, how
to handle school issues and more.
Without intervention, kids with anxiety are thrown daily by their
radar set to pick up any danger, and distort any risk. But once kids
have learned how to challenge worry's authority and generate new information
about a situation, they are no longer at the whim of their imagination.
Today, kids with anxiety can expect to learn the skills they need to
lead a full and happy life.
Come join us, learn with us and start to impart your knowledge to
help your child become a worry wise kid!
What's Normal Anxiety
Even in the best of situations, all children experience some anxiety
in the form of worry, apprehension, dread, fear or distress. Occasional
nervousness and fleeting anxieties occur when a child is first faced
with an unfamiliar or especially stressful situation. It can be an important
protection or signal for caution in certain situations. In fact there
are specific expected fears that accompany each stage of child development.
Anxiety: Normal and Necessary
From toddlers to teens, life's challenges may be met with a temporary
retreat from the situation, a greater reliance on parents for reassurance,
a reluctance to take chances, and a wavering confidence. Typically these
concerns will resolve when the child learns to master the situation
or the situation changes. Incorporating their newfound abilities, whether
it is mastering a new school, the neighborhood pool, taking tests, encountering
dogs, kids move on from their fears and have no lasting ill-effects.
Parents can facilitate a child's successful adjustment to a new challenge
by: (1) being accepting of the child's concerns, (2) listening to the
child's perceptions, and gently correcting misinformation, and (3) patiently
encouraging a child to approach a feared situation one step at a time
until it is becomes familiar and manageable.
Infancy
In response to a growing ability to differentiate familiar
faces (parents) from unfamiliar, stranger anxiety (clinging and crying
when a stranger approaches) develops around 7-9 months and typically
resolves by end of first year.
Early Childhood
As a healthy attachment to parents grows, separation
anxiety (crying, sadness, fear of desertion upon separation) emerges
around one year and improves over the next 3 years, resolving in most
children by the end of kindergarten. As children's worlds expand, they
may fear new and unfamiliar situations, and real and imagined dangers
from big dogs, to spiders, to monsters. Children from age 3-6 are trying
to master what is real and what is not, and until this is resolved,
they may have difficulty with costumed characters, ghosts, and supernatural
beings. While trying to master fears of what could be they
may struggle with the dark, the basement, closets, and under the bed.
As a child learns how to manage and put aside these fears, their ability
to sleep alone will be secured.
School Aged Children
Each year, with access to new information, children
begin to fear real world dangers-fire drills, burglars, storms, illness,
or drugs. With experience, they learn that these risks can exist as
remote, rather than imminent dangers. In middle school, the growing
importance of social status leads to social comparisons and worries
about social acceptance. Concerns about academic and athletic performance,
and social group identification are normal. Learning about various physical
and mental health diseases in school may lead to some temporary concerns
about risk and safety. Teenagers continue to be focused on social acceptance,
but with a greater concern for finding a group that reflects their chosen
identity. Concerns about the larger world, moral issues and their future
successes are common.
When You Should be Concerned
Anxiety is considered a disorder not based on what a child
is worrying about, but rather how that worry is impacting a child's
functioning. The content may be "normal" but help is needed
when a child is experiencing too much worry or suffering immensely over
what may appear to be insignificant situations, when worry and avoidance
become a child's automatic response in many situations, when they feel
constantly keyed up, or when coaxing or reassurance are ineffective
in moving them through. For these children anxiety is not protecting
them, but rather preventing them from fully participating in typical
activities of daily life-school, friendships, academic performance.
Problem Anxieties
Unremitting anxiety lasting for weeks or months at a time can cause
physical distress in the form of headaches, stomachaches, nausea, vomiting
and sleeplessness, Difficulty sleeping, reluctance to go to school or
elsewhere outside of the child's comfort zone, crying jags, tantrums
and clinginess are common. Anxiety can also interfere with a child's
concentration and decision-making. An anxious child's thinking is typically
unrealistic, catastrophic and pessimistic. They may seek excessive reassurance
and yet the benefit of that reassurance is fleeting. Irritability and
anger can also be red flags for anxiety when a child becomes frustrated
by the stress of worry, or worn down from sleep deprivation. For some
children, feeling "different" from other kids can be an additional
source of concern.
Common Red flags
Demonstrating excessive distress out of proportion to the situation:
crying, physical symptoms, sadness, anger, frustration, hopelessness,
embarrassment
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Easily distressed, or agitated when in a stressful situation
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Repetitive reassurance questions, "what if" concerns,
inconsolable, won't respond to logical arguments
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Headaches, stomachaches, regularly too sick to go to school
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Anticipatory anxiety, worrying hours, days, weeks ahead
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Disruptions of sleep with difficulty falling asleep, frequent
nightmares, difficulty sleeping alone
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Perfectionism, self-critical, very high standards that make nothing
good enough
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Overly-responsible, people pleasing, excessive concern that others
are upset with him or her, unnecessary apologizing
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Demonstrating excessive avoidance, refuses to participate in expected
activities, refusal to attend school
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Disruption of child or family functioning, difficulty with going
to school, friend's houses, religious activities, family gatherings,
errands, vacations
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Excessive time spent consoling child about distress with ordinary
situations, excessive time coaxing child to do normal activities-
homework, hygiene, meals
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New Feature
Therapists and parents, see
cognitive-behavior therapy in action as expert therapists address a variety
of anxiety problems. Current Case: A 12 year old girl with a vomit
phobia.
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