
I was going to call this post childhood anxiety but quickly realised that anyone landing here in the hope of finding some useful information to help their own child would find themselves disappointed.
What I’m actually doing here is asking for help on this very subject. If I am able to access some helpful sites and resources I'll be sure to write a more useful post. In the meantime I'm asking: how do you help an over-anxious child?
This is not a persistent, all-consuming issue in our house, but it is one that does raise its head every so often and one that leaves me concerned and unsure what to do. It is something we are living with at the moment and it isn't easy.
IJ’s recent episode of anxiety has been caused, in part, by a trip to see Narnia with her school. It’s not a film I feel she should have been exposed to and I wasn’t aware that the trip involved the showing of a PG film that is quite scary in parts. However, I’ve made my views known and the matter has been dealt with.
But it does leave me with a child who isn’t sleeping well, who is worried about me dying and being alone in the world and who has become acutely sensitive to absolutely everything to the extent that she has resorted to watching The Tweenies, because there is nothing anxiety-provoking or frightening in the world of Jake and Milo.
And we’ve been here before.
Last year I wrote a post called Mummy, I cannot smile. We haven’t reached the stage of IJ being noticeably unhappy. She remains happy and outgoing, at least at home, but the anxieties that have been with her on and off for the last couple of years are creeping in again at night, and something isn’t right.
So how do you help an over-anxious child who winds herself up with worry and goes over and over the same concerns in her head no matter what reassurances you offer? I’d like to know.