Karen Chesnutt, Ph.D

Tag: Anxiety

When your Child is Worrying (Part 2)

January 12, 2017 /

In an earlier blog, I discussed anxiety in children.  Most of us don’t want to think about the fact that children can worry. It’s not our idea of childhood.  Parents’ innate responses are to comfort and protect.  The way to handle childhood fears is actually the opposite of that.  As I explained earlier, firm parenting is key to addressing your child’s fears.

Here are some more suggestions about what to do:

  • It is important to remember that anxiety often has a ruminating quality to it and it can dominate your child’s thoughts. You should not foster this by constantly talking with him/her about it.  Put limits on the conversation,  so you can help your child learn how to do that.  You might say, “I understand that you are worried about flying, but that is not happening for two months, so I will not talk with you about it now” and then don’t.
  • Our general treatment for specific fears is to have children face these fears. That is the only way they can get past them, so the fears don’t have an ongoing impact on their lives. Since this is a stressful process, I usually suggest that you only use this technique when other areas of your child’s life are relatively stable. And you will want to do it in a step-wise fashion. For example, for children who are afraid to go upstairs by themselves, I have them practice walking upstairs first with a parent present. They start with 5 steps and then increase daily. When they finally get upstairs, I have a parent at the bottom of the stairs. The child starts by staying upstairs and counting to five. Then I have parents increase the task until the fear is totally overcome. The important thing is to do only a small step at a time.  In this way, your child can overcome a specific fear, but at the same time feel very successful.
  • Obviously, using punishment or shaming will make anxiety worse, not better.
  • If your child’s sleep is disrupted for more than 2 weeks, I recommend seeing a therapist soon.  For my patients, I use this as a red flag that the anxiety is reaching a point where a  professional opinion is needed.

 

Your Child is Worrying! What Should a Parent Do? (Part 1)

January 10, 2017 /

All of us worry at some point in our lives. Most of the time, parents are surprised when their children, even preschoolers start worrying. We have this idea that childhood should be carefree, but that isn’t the reality for some children.

So where does this anxiety come from?  We inherit a predisposition to how we respond to stress. Some of the tendency to be anxious may run in the family and then be triggered by some kind of stress. In other children, it can be a direct result of trauma. We usually don’t think about trauma as occurring in children, but we are becoming much more aware of it. Things such as accidents, medical procedures, family disputes and obviously abuse all can trigger anxiety in children.

You can see anxiety in your children for a number of reasons. Sometimes, specific events are frightening for them, like thunderstorms or having to ride in an elevator. Other children are shy and have difficulty in new or public situations. Some worry about everything, starting most sentences with, “What if…” I often find that a bright child can come up with many “What ifs.”  They also can develop fears as a result of news coverage of a tragedy or natural disaster. Some develop stomachaches, some have difficulty leaving home, some are clingy to adults and others have problems sleeping.

My concern is that the family response is often the opposite of what needs to happen. Parents feel sorry when they see their child suffering so much. They want to comfort and protect their child. This is a natural response, but one that will not help stop the cycle of anxiety. In fact, it will make it worse.

Parents want their child to understand that there is nothing to worry about, so they spend a great deal of time discussing why thunderstorms or elevators aren’t dangerous. Sometimes, parents try to avoid the frightening situation or try to protect their child (“It’s OK, you don’t have to talk to the waiter. I’ll order your meal”).

Children who are afraid don’t need explanations. Fears are emotional, not rational. No rational explanation will help. The first step for parents is to realize that indulging their child’s fears will not help at all. In fact, it just reinforces them. A child might think, “If Mom thinks there is a reason to be afraid and we avoid the elevator, it must be really dangerous.”

Here’s the first step to take:

  • The most important thing you can do is to establish firm parenting. Your child needs to realize that you are stronger than his/her thoughts. You are the one who is in charge of life. For example, your child does not need to worry about someone breaking into the house, because security is your job and you are quite good at it.  You, as parents, are the ones who decide if a weather situation is dangerous or not. Basically, you relieve their fears by being the ones in charge and making the decisions.

This firm parental presence is the best way to reduce a child’s anxiety. It should not just occur in a specific situation but should be an overall approach to parenting.

In my next blog, I will review some other ways to help your child cope with anxiety but strong parenting is the foundation of all the rest.

IQ Tests

November 29, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Those dreaded words, “It’s a test!” Even after being out of school for many years, the idea of a test still makes us nervous.  So, if it has been suggested that your child needs to have an IQ test done, here are some things that you need to know.

What are they?

There are all kinds of IQ tests.  Each type has some strength in terms of what they measure and some weaknesses. Often, a psychologist will ask you to outline your concerns and then will pick the test that will best answer your questions.  In a separate blog, I will review a number of these tests to give you an idea of what each one is like.

The tests themselves are made up of sub-tests.  What psychological researchers and test developers have done is to identify each kind of “cognitive” skill (meaning thinking skill).  Then they have analyzed school success and determined the most important cognitive skill that is related to good school performance. Then, they try to find tasks for those cognitive skills and include them in the battery. Parents often ask me specifically how each task relates to schoolwork, and the truth is that it is a statistical relationship. IQ tests don’t test reading or math, for example. Sometimes, parents are confused by this and don’t realize that the tests are developed to predict overall school success. For example, an IQ Test could be used to predict how well a student will do overall in high school.

On some of the IQ tests, we can look at some patterns in the sub-test scores and answer some other questions about how your child learns.  Some of them can help us identify if your child is a verbal learner or a visual learner.  On some, we can measure how efficiently your child works on specific kinds of tasks.  Some of the newer tests have included more sections on reasoning.

The sub-tests that are included are designed to give us information about how successful your child is likely to be in school.  Remember, they do not measure life success.  This is a common misconception.

What information can we get from them?

IQ tests help us get a general idea of what our expectations should be about school performance.   Other factors may be involved, but IQ test data can help us make good academic choices for our children.

Students with ADD sometimes have a specific pattern of sub-test scores that helps make that diagnosis.  IQ tests can identify some specific types of learning disabilities.

What can’t an IQ test do?

It can’t diagnose reading disabilities, dyslexia or math disabilities.  Other tests, in addition to an IQ test, are needed.  It can’t diagnose autism or autism spectrum disorders.  It can’t diagnose emotional difficulties such as depression or anxiety.

So, if your child needs an IQ test, no worries!!

  • Most of the time, children think they are playing “games.” It is far less stressful than the tests you remember.
  • The results should help you plan for your child. They provide a road map for school services, not a “life sentence” of any sort.  I advise parents to use this data only for what it was designed to do—to plan for school.

DON’T FORGET!

      IQ tests can’t predict life success.  IQ data must never be used to judge a child’s value.  Even though in popular use, it is implied that high IQs are better or more valuable, that just is not true.  Your child’s worth should never be linked to a number!

Why Are So Many of Our Children Anxious?

November 8, 2016 / / 0 Comments

That’s the question my sister recently asked me.  Teens in high school now have soaring rates of anxiety.  College students now also have highly anxious and this is increasing regularly.  The question is, “Why?”

There are several reasons, and it is easy if we look at the “greatest generation” (people born between 1910-1925) for comparison.

  • People in the “greatest generation” had things they believed in. My father believed in the US Government.  He is a true “patriot” in that he believed in the fact that we were the “good guys.”   Subsequent revelations have indicated that that is not exactly true.
  • People believed in the free market system. My father worked for the same company for his whole career.  He believed that they produced the best product, had the worker’s interests at heart and that they would do “right” by the country.  Unfortunately, none of that is true.
  • People believed in the church. Recent revelations have shown that the church could not be trusted as well.
  • People believed in heroes.   My father believed that Joe Paterno and Penn State were heroes.  Unfortunately, that proved not to be true.  Sports figures?  Movie Stars?  Politicians?  There are many others we can name, but we can’t name too many people who we truly regard as heroes.  Instead, this generation has Homer Simpson and the disgraced adults in the public eye.
  • People believed that regulators would keep us safe.  Then there was Flint, and many other examples.

So the problem for children and teens becomes, who can we trust?  Who is running our world?  Some have turned to each other and found bullying emails instead.

So, are you worried yet?  You can see how our young people don’t feel that they have any security in their life.  It is the role of parents, teachers and other adults to provide safety nets for our young people.  They will need to develop their own emotional strength to deal with a very complicated world.

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