Child Anxiety..

[lucafen4]

here's some serious advice from the LF for once.... Pay attention to your child, read between the lines, listen to them. They are young, their reactions and expression (even at 5, 6, 7) are not fully clear as to what the problem actually is. By doing this - you will insure you are always, always there for him/her.

I share this because I know someone (not anyone in particular, just statistically there is, on this site has a child that is exhibiting something similar and maybe you haven't identified it yet. Or maybe you have, well now you know - you're not alone. I silently used this forum as a form of self-therapy through Nov, Dec... so thanks (unbeknownst to everyone else)

To say this past school year has been trying for me and my wife is the understatement of a lifetime (there's no abuse of any kind we've had to deal with - in case the intro led anyone in that mindset).

Anxiety, oh boy, it's a tough one. My daughter's a pretty smart gal (toot toot.. whatever) but she's also super shy. Shy to the point at her best friends birthday party, she attaches to whichever parent has taken her and will not go off and play with the other kids. You can see the anxiety and stress in her during the parties, but she always wants to go. Last year it was January before her kindergarten teacher heard her voice.

This Halloween, shit hit the fan. Shoes, I've had nightmares about shoes. She could not put them on. When your kid says they can't put their shoes on to go get candy, something legit is up. It took an hour, we bribed her with a fish, that is she went trick or treating - we'd buy her a fish on the weekend. In her head, the thought of going to strangers doors, dressed up, having to talk to adults and being given direct attention - terrified her.

The following week, my resolve, and my wife's resolve as a parent was tested to its core. Underwear, socks, pants, shirts, jackets, you name it - everything was uncomfortable. For the next week we had to carry her into the school, tears streaming down her face because she could not get her socks, shoes on, some days we had to hold her pants or shirt on as we carried her. It wasn't pretty.

Before anyone judges that 'forcing' her to go to school. If we created a trend or allowed the thought to enter her head that she could stay home and not wear clothes on school days. We would have slipped on that slope and getting back up would have been 10x's harder. We've patiently worked with her to get dressed, which for a three month period, averaged 2 hours a night. and at least once a week, whatever worked last night, felt like shit in the morning and the stripping of clothes, back to square one began

One morning, mid-battle over pants my mind switched 180 degrees in an instant. I hugged and hugged her, held her and just told her over and over again everything was okay. I told her we weren't going to fight her on this anymore, we needed to find a solution, all of us together, as a team. She wasn't able to do things she loved to do, that's not rebellious acting out - that's a serious problem.

In week, things improved slightly, things are still not perfect. We still have days where we have to carry her into school without shoes on, warm weather & flip-flops make life so much easier I tell you. She dresses every night for school the next day, we've been seeing a psychologist every two weeks for the past 5 months, we're blessed (I'm by no means religious, but this benefit is a huge perk with my job) we have this option. We have charts coming out of our wazoo's to encourage her to do things that normally bring about her anxiety.

Her anxiety manifests itself into sensory issues. These uncomfortable feelings are 'Icing' the worry dragon - well, **** him! 'Icing' is the only thing she's allowed to punch in the face, and it's openly encouraged. We've watched layer after layer peal back and witnessed her stretch her legs and grow so much. There's still so far to go in so many ways though.

Anxiety is behavioural, not a mental health issue. This I've learned. Bell's campaign 'let's talk' doesn't scratch this one.

So, while I've shared a very personal, ongoing battle/saga in my life with the Dobber masses, I've done so to let any of you who are experiencing anything like this to know, you're not alone. There's light at the end of the tunnel,

but most importantly, and especially if you're sitting there where I was at Halloween, take a step back, survey your child's behaviour. There's a very real possibility they aren't just being a brat. The only way you will survive is as a team.

I could easily be writing this as a single parent, had we not had that epiphany moment & changed our tact 180 degrees. Writing this is also another step in my journey with my family to come out on the other side, stronger and better.

If you feel like you are me... feel free to send me a PM.

[YzermansLegacy]

Absolutely tremendous courage and kindness to share your truth LF. Thank you.

[Tobias Funke]

Lucafen. You’re on the right track. Parenting is an ever changing, in exact science in that every child and situation may require a modified approach.

I’m a full time single father of a 13 year old girl. I cane to have custody do to mom having severe mental health issues, which in turn led to a messy battle. One doesn’t have to think to hard to imagine the emotional stress all this put on my daughter. After all, she is the one who requested to not go back there mommy, so things haven’t been all roses for her. I couldn’t count how many nights I’d be up with her into the wee hours, trying to console her and have her understand emotions that she’s far to young to understand.

Obviously unconditional love and support is a must. It’s a slippery slope indeed between supporting and coddling, as you alude to.

Personally, my daughter have been through a lot. Sadly, I’m now a veteran at dealing with professional counseling and school guidance counsers etc. And in the same vain as you offering support to others here, I too offer my support or advice or any help to you or anyone else who feels they want them reach out of in this regard.

Good luck bro.

[Pengwin7]

lucafen4... I'm there with ya.
And - you'll know I am - because this is where you are saying in your head "No, no - there's no way anybody else gets this."
My 8 year old. I could type for HOURS about her.

Best summary on her is this:
1. She knew her alphabet at 1yr8mo, we have it on film. Not just rehearsing, but recognizing letters.
2. She didn't walk until 1yr10mo.
3. She's currently in 2nd grade, her tested reading level is an "8th grade average".
4. Her vocabulary is so deep that teachers tell us, annually, "Her tongue is too sharp. Sometimes the kids are deeply hurt by her words when she gets mad, most times they simply don't understand the word."
5. In pre-K, her teacher said "I've been doing this 25 years... never seen a kid like this. I don't know how to deal with her swings."

I call it a "switch". The "reasoning switch".
For my kid, sometimes, it just goes "OFF" - and she's this different person, can't reason with her.
...
I could go on forever.
I just wanted to tell you this... "it (could) get better".
When my kid was 3, I once took her to the park and upon arriving she said "it doesn't look like its supposed to".
When I tried to explain, she lost her mind... fell to the ground, started doing snow angels rapidly in the mulch/bark chips and then started shoving them in her mouth and chewing on them.
...
"OFF"
...
I had to wait it out. Parents eyes everywhere.
Shit like this happened at home... daily.
It happened in public... weekly.
It still happens, but on a much muted/lesser frequency.
...
My feeling. The world is different these days.
People don't notice it, but automated things like "bill-pay", dishwashers, dryers... they open up a LOT of free time for parents.
Some... sit around doing nothing.
Others (me, possibly you)... spend that time with their kid.
Probably a LOT more time than previous generations could spend with their kid.

If you are a good parent, like I try to be, you may have spent TOO MUCH time with your kid.
Their brain is further along than emotional level. This is my daughter - per teachers & pediatrician.
It causes in imbalance that when they aren't able to achieve something that they understand, they lose their emotional stability and all goes... OFF.
Stuff she KNOWS how to do, stops working. (In your case... shoes.)

Could be your kid, sounds like it a bit.
I think it's more prevalent these days with the free time we have to parent... and, especially, educate/teach.

My wife has been pregnant 8 times.
My oldest daughter is the only one we had by natural conception.
1 for 8. (We do have two genetic kids, story for another day)
*I mention this as a "you never know", maybe you guys had miscarriages. Sometime about my daughter was a little stronger to make it down the tubes in tact... but it's also possible that every egg got badly damaged. I mean, not really, but there's possibly some great correlation on why the one that made it is so incredible and so ****ed up at the same time.

When our first came, we were so happy we spent every.single.****ing.moment with her.
TOO MUCH TIME.
She became SMART... too SMART... but her natural emotional level was off balance.
It all led to where we are now.

We held her back a year in school.
I argued with my wife that she was intellectually ready, if not beyond. I was right about that.
My wife argued that our daughter was not emotionally ready. She was right about that.
I let my wife win, we held her back... it has really helped.
She's the oldest in the class, but the smallest in the class, and she copes better with day-to-day stuff when the switch goes "OFF".

Another parents' story. Hang in there.
It got worse from 3 to 4... awful those years... better 4 to 5, 5 to 6, 6 to 7.
We're probably down to one switch "OFF" per week now, maybe five or six epic switch "OFFS" per year.
At least she doesn't destroy her room these days when the switch goes off.
Just this morning, the switch should have gone off when I told her she didn't have time to finish this rainbow-loom bracelet she started making with too little time before bus.
I told her we had to go (in my calmest voice). This morning, she threw the half-finished bracelet and... made a face at me. (But on another day, the switch might have flipped, today it did NOT. We made the bus.)

Hang in there, bud.
You are probably a good parent.
Don't change, just make a note of patterns over year so you can track a trend to report to your doctors or peds.

Good luck.

[ps. Sensory Issues. Oh hell YES! YES! Good lord. If her eye is itchy she will lose her shit and scream in restaurants... still... at 8. But she's had some doozies of stuff over the years. Most epic was a "dot" in her mouth at 3 or 4. She called it "the dot" and she just yelled for days about it. It was one of those gum bumps that people get occasionally when sick. It went a way. To this day my wife and I will hear that word... "dot"... and just look at each other, deep eye contact (internal parent moment eye-contact) and just say "DOOOOT!". Holy fugg. For real. My kid still doesn't wear underwear, at all, ever. Doesn't like the way it feels. I put her socks & shoes on everyday, always have. I do. Because if the line is off on the sock toe, she's OFF. 3rd grade is coming and I've warned her that she will start doing her own shoes and socks next year... we'll see.]

[GinFizz]

thank you for this courageous and insightful post
I wish you and your family all the best

signed
dad of an 11 month old daughter

[GinFizz]

Question did your girls go to day care when they were young?

[lucafen4]

lucafen4... I'm there with ya.
And - you'll know I am - because this is where you are saying in your head "No, no - there's no way anybody else gets this."
My 8 year old. I could type for HOURS about her.

Best summary on her is this:
1. She knew her alphabet at 1yr8mo, we have it on film. Not just rehearsing, but recognizing letters.
2. She didn't walk until 1yr10mo.
3. She's currently in 2nd grade, her tested reading level is an "8th grade average".
4. Her vocabulary is so deep that teachers tell us, annually, "Her tongue is too sharp. Sometimes the kids are deeply hurt by her words when she gets mad, most times they simply don't understand the word."
5. In pre-K, her teacher said "I've been doing this 25 years... never seen a kid like this. I don't know how to deal with her swings."

I call it a "switch". The "reasoning switch".
For my kid, sometimes, it just goes "OFF" - and she's this different person, can't reason with her.
...
I could go on forever.
I just wanted to tell you this... "it (could) get better".
When my kid was 3, I once took her to the park and upon arriving she said "it doesn't look like its supposed to".
When I tried to explain, she lost her mind... fell to the ground, started doing snow angels rapidly in the mulch/bark chips and then started shoving them in her mouth and chewing on them.
...
"OFF"
...
I had to wait it out. Parents eyes everywhere.
Shit like this happened at home... daily.
It happened in public... weekly.
It still happens, but on a much muted/lesser frequency.
...
My feeling. The world is different these days.
People don't notice it, but automated things like "bill-pay", dishwashers, dryers... they open up a LOT of free time for parents.
Some... sit around doing nothing.
Others (me, possibly you)... spend that time with their kid.
Probably a LOT more time than previous generations could spend with their kid.

If you are a good parent, like I try to be, you may have spent TOO MUCH time with your kid.
Their brain is further along than emotional level. This is my daughter - per teachers & pediatrician.
It causes in imbalance that when they aren't able to achieve something that they understand, they lose their emotional stability and all goes... OFF.
Stuff she KNOWS how to do, stops working. (In your case... shoes.)

Could be your kid, sounds like it a bit.
I think it's more prevalent these days with the free time we have to parent... and, especially, educate/teach.

My wife has been pregnant 8 times.
My oldest daughter is the only one we had by natural conception.
1 for 8. (We do have two genetic kids, story for another day)
*I mention this as a "you never know", maybe you guys had miscarriages. Sometime about my daughter was a little stronger to make it down the tubes in tact... but it's also possible that every egg got badly damaged. I mean, not really, but there's possibly some great correlation on why the one that made it is so incredible and so ****ed up at the same time.

When our first came, we were so happy we spent every.single.****ing.moment with her.
TOO MUCH TIME.
She became SMART... too SMART... but her natural emotional level was off balance.
It all led to where we are now.

We held her back a year in school.
I argued with my wife that she was intellectually ready, if not beyond. I was right about that.
My wife argued that our daughter was not emotionally ready. She was right about that.
I let my wife win, we held her back... it has really helped.
She's the oldest in the class, but the smallest in the class, and she copes better with day-to-day stuff when the switch goes "OFF".

Another parents' story. Hang in there.
It got worse from 3 to 4... awful those years... better 4 to 5, 5 to 6, 6 to 7.
We're probably down to one switch "OFF" per week now, maybe five or six epic switch "OFFS" per year.
At least she doesn't destroy her room these days when the switch goes off.
Just this morning, the switch should have gone off when I told her she didn't have time to finish this rainbow-loom bracelet she started making with too little time before bus.
I told her we had to go (in my calmest voice). This morning, she threw the half-finished bracelet and... made a face at me. (But on another day, the switch might have flipped, today it did NOT. We made the bus.)

Hang in there, bud.
You are probably a good parent.
Don't change, just make a note of patterns over year so you can track a trend to report to your doctors or peds.

Good luck.

[ps. Sensory Issues. Oh hell YES! YES! Good lord. If her eye is itchy she will lose her shit and scream in restaurants... still... at 8. But she's had some doozies of stuff over the years. Most epic was a "dot" in her mouth at 3 or 4. She called it "the dot" and she just yelled for days about it. It was one of those gum bumps that people get occasionally when sick. It went a way. To this day my wife and I will hear that word... "dot"... and just look at each other, deep eye contact (internal parent moment eye-contact) and just say "DOOOOT!". Holy fugg. For real. My kid still doesn't wear underwear, at all, ever. Doesn't like the way it feels. I put her socks & shoes on everyday, always have. I do. Because if the line is off on the sock toe, she's OFF. 3rd grade is coming and I've warned her that she will start doing her own shoes and socks next year... we'll see.]

Thanks for sharing. Peng, I know we're not alone, I know we don't have the most extreme situation out there, but at times... I've wanted to compare battle scars. We leave socks and underwear as optional. It's one of our survival techniques. You call it the reasoning switch, we call it a 'trigger'. if we go anywhere, we park the car so that her seat is opposite the sun, so in the shade. God forbid she see her seat lit up. it's a 10min wait - min. Now, in a booster, I flip it over, every time. We bring water with us absolutely everywhere, if her throat gets dry, no matter where we are, we'll get our own snow angels, mall, 7-11, park, doesn't matter.

I can completely relate to 'off' - especially with socks. Hell, I stalked 10 different stores until I finally found seamless socks (in the higher end children's stores) they had unicorns on them - double whammy. NOPE! 'Too Soft! They're Wet!' -- wtf.. they haven't been washed yet. made from different material, they were super, ultra soft. but her skin told her something else. $20 for two pair and she's maybe worn them twice.

We've created a game for socks, she must have 50+ pairs now. I took her drawer out of her dresser, dumped all of her socks on the ground, covered her face with a blanket and picked a pair at random. She gave a thumbs up, thumbs down, or any random degree of approval/disapproval (thumb at different angles) based on how the socks felt. I mixed pairs together, purposely put some on sideways, heels up front whatever I could do to mess with her. 90 minutes later and over 60 pairs (I re-used some socks making odd pairs) we had a random pile of loose socks that were full thumbs up. We've done this 15 or so times now.. conditioning. I've even caught her playing the game alone, having a bunch of socks lined up and a shirt covering her eyes (she's cheating, I know it, but who cares - she's conditioning herself, trying to make a pair she loves 'feel good'. Luckily, on the west coast our winters are mild, so we can do no socks a lot easier than others.

Your bracelet story - is my child. We give 5min - 2min - 1min - final count down - countdowns. It seems to help, but if it's something she's 100% into, it doesn't matter. We then give ourselves a count down to when we can return to the table. I can relate. If you've felt like you've had an out of body experience, perhaps we've traded places? While there's some real differences, we've got some serious overlap.

Keep marching forward, it's all we can do. thanks again for sharing.

[lucafen4]

Question did your girls go to day care when they were young?

Mine did, private with a friend for 12mths, regular daycare for 18mths, then a Montessori pre-school for final year. This is all nature with her, sensitivities, shyness, it was all there before pre-school/daycare

[Pengwin7]

Toenails! I forgot toenails!
Hardest personal-maintenance thing we had to do with my oldest.
Could not get it done (even while sleeping, she'd shift, wake up, she KNEW!).
I had to physically pin her down (to cut them) when they got so long they started causing in-shoe discomfort.

To this day, still, toenails... we have to promise her "riches" (toys, sweets, a story, a backrub, whatever) to get her to let me do it.
Then the 2-minute freakout timer starts as soon as she sits - with a comfort blanky and a towel wrapped around her mid-foot.
If I just shift the clipper around the edge of a single toe at the wrong pace... it's over.
Shit has to go per-fect-ly.

I thought about typing LOL after that last sentence... but it's really not.
Personal stress for toenail trimming alone probably stole a few months off my lifespan.
[I shant compare it to hostage-negotiation... but... it wore me the F out to try and "perfect situation" through those events!]

[PenguinHunter]

Thanks for sharing guys!!

It is awesome that you feel comfortable in opening up about it all. Definitely praying for your individual situations and anyone else that might be going through the same things.

[Pengwin7]

I've learned from my wife that sharing with communities can be really helpful, not just for self... but for others.
With our 7 miscarriages... we didn't know how common miscarriages were for women until she went and found 100s... 1000s of people to talk to.
It was brutally hard at first, when her other 4/4 friend moms are popping babies out (the usual, pleasurable way) and we are having to knock out things on a schedule, pray, cry, wait, repeat.

With kids, you sort of end up getting "stories" from maybe 5-10 parent friends... maybe 15-20 classmate parents.
That's really not enough exposure to the wide gamut of kid-types.

Gaussian curve. Kids are there too. 80%-90% of kids are pretty normal.
But somebody has the 1in10 kid... somebody has that 1in100 kid... some kid... is THAT kid.
Just have to open of your range of seeing the world of kids to know that somebody else has that kid outside of the Gaussian middle!!! (nerd-talk)
The important thing is to just smile & nod when your other friend moms & dads with the easy/standard/typical kids are giving you advice.
(When teachers, my parents, my wife's parents, other friend parents all get enough exposure to our kid... they agree... damn, your kid is HIGH-maintenance! Um, yup.)


Oh, btw... our 2nd kid: NOR-MAL.
Praise. Be.

[lucafen4]

I've learned from my wife that sharing with communities can be really helpful, not just for self... but for others.
With our 7 miscarriages... we didn't know how common miscarriages were for women until she went and found 100s... 1000s of people to talk to.
It was brutally hard at first, when her other 4/4 friend moms are popping babies out (the usual, pleasurable way) and we are having to knock out things on a schedule, pray, cry, wait, repeat.

With kids, you sort of end up getting "stories" from maybe 5-10 parent friends... maybe 15-20 classmate parents.
That's really not enough exposure to the wide gamut of kid-types.

Gaussian curve. Kids are there too. 80%-90% of kids are pretty normal.
But somebody has the 1in10 kid... somebody has that 1in100 kid... some kid... is THAT kid.
Just have to open of your range of seeing the world of kids to know that somebody else has that kid outside of the Gaussian middle!!! (nerd-talk)
The important thing is to just smile & nod when your other friend moms & dads with the easy/standard/typical kids are giving you advice.
(When teachers, my parents, my wife's parents, other friend parents all get enough exposure to our kid... they agree... damn, your kid is HIGH-maintenance! Um, yup.)


Oh, btw... our 2nd kid: NOR-MAL.
Praise. Be.

I'm about 98% sure I'm in the 2.1% portion of this curve (see what I did there?)

[lucafen4]

Thanks for sharing lucafen... I hope things continue to improve and I applaud your strength and patience.

Quick question though, just for my own understanding, you wrote earlier that anxiety is behavioral, not a mental health issue.
What did you mean by that ? I thought anxiety was very much classified under the mental health spectrum.

Anxiety is defined as a disorder, not a mental illness. it's a behavioural condition.

If you google that question, Is anxiety a mental illness? You get this above the search results:

Anxiety disorder is NOT a mental illness, it is a behavioral condition, there is a very BIG difference. Mental illnesses are clinical conditions which have a 'biological' basis, anxiety disorders are caused by a 'resetting' of the 'baseline' anxiety level; this happens through reinforcing the anxiety disorder by repetitive anxious behavior.

My daughter is being treated through cognitive therapy & exposure treatment. It's a big reason why our 'uncomfortable sock game' is working. she keeps exposing herself to different feels, textures and finding that over time, the pile of what feels good is growing. She's constantly blown away that those socks feel good. The only pair that never feel good are her monkey socks. (they fell in the driveway and we ran over them in the rain with the car). somehow she knows as soon as they touch her goes, no matter how blind I know she is. "Oh no! not the monkey socks" It's amazing how in-tune she is with herself and her body.

[marc1pol2]

Veryinteresting and inspirational post. I am myself a dad of 2 young boys and likeevery parent, I Try to do my best to raised them to become good and accomplishhuman being. But something striked me oneday : we know little about how the brain of our childs works, how it evolvesand what’s the best way to deal with their differents ? problematic ?behaviour. After some research, i found a book that explain those things and itreally helps me to deal with my boys. I drop the name here if it can helpsothers parents, I’d be more than happy : The whole-brain child by DR.Daniel J. Siegel and Dr. Tina Paine-Bryson.

[RizzeeDizzee]

As a parent of one child who's had crohn's disease since age 10 and another who's on the asperger side of the spectrum, I feel your pain and fear. The hardest part is wanting to help but either not being able to or finding that help sometimes seemingly makes it worse. Do you best to provide a stable and loving home environment, and seek out medical advice. Also, I'd caution you to avoid doing too much googling, since most everyone who posts on google has a sad story to tell. What you're not hearing is the success stories, since those often go untold.