When we talk about anxiety in children, we are talking about an increasingly frequent problem that we must prevent with all the means at our disposal. If we already know the consequences of anxiety in adults, children with anxiety run a more serious risk of seeing their personal and intellectual development affected.
Anxiety in children can mark their emotional future, determine their adult behavior and turn them into a person with chronic anxiety disorders whose treatment will be increasingly difficult to find. Therefore, we must prevent anxiety in children.
Children with anxiety
We tend to consider anxiety as an adult disease , especially women. However, anxiety disorders also affect children and adolescents. Anxiety that can manifest itself in these children in the form of nerves, anguish, lack of concentration, self-esteem problems, insecurity, rebellion, disobedience, bad manners… but also in the form of eating and sleeping disorders.
These manifestations of anxiety are more dangerous in children than in adults because we are talking about a developing person who, when affected by anxiety, can see their growth rate altered. And we are talking about growth both on a personal and intellectual level, but also with consequences for your health if anxiety is not treated.
A child with anxiety is a child with fears that can become a phobia, a child with school problems, with a tendency to depression, with insecurity, with a lack of initiative, at risk of getting close to drugs, with a future plagued with emotional disorders. But the most worrying thing about a child with anxiety is that he is a child without illusion.
Prevent anxiety in children
Protecting the child from anxiety disorders is the basic premise. A job that must be carried out in perfect harmony by parents, doctors and also educators. Parents are primarily responsible for providing the child with emotional stability and the necessary resources to face the various inconveniences of life.
It can be argued that if the parents themselves also suffer from anxiety problems, they will be able to do little to teach their child something that they are unaware of, which is to learn to manage anxiety. In this case, psychotherapy is the best alternative, both for children and adults, in family therapy sessions in which all those who are in charge of the child in one way or another must participate: father, mother, siblings, and grandparents.
But there is something that parents can do to prevent anxiety in the child. They may not be able to discover the tools to face life, but it is in your power to surround the child with affection, love, hugs, understanding, acceptance and support that will keep him away from insecurity and lack of self-esteem.