Chronic anxiety, also known as toxic stress, is ongoing and overwhelming for individuals who experience it and interferes with everyday functioning.
It would be impossible to create an all-encompassing list of causes and reasons children might experience chronic anxiety. However, within this newsletter, we’d like to highlight a few more common reasons and empower you as a parent with the knowledge to recognize and make adjustments if you see fit.
Excess Screen Time
- Children get, on average, 7-8 hours of screen time a day.
- We are less concerned about the screen itself but rather what the screen replaces= time connecting face-to-face with friends and family, play, and physical movement.
Discipline that Divides
- We use discipline that signals to our children that our love is contingent on them behaving.
- This comes from shaming, spanking, yelling, or isolating children.
Children and Teens Feel out of Control
- Children have limited opportunities to be in the driver's seat of their own lives to develop competency and agency.
- Parents are increasingly more prone to making all the decisions for them.
Disconnection from Nature
- Children need time outdoors but spend, on average, only 1 hour a day outdoors.
- We evolved as a species to be outdoors.
- Children need this to regulate their nervous system, neurotransmitter production (mood regulation, sleep (helps regulate their circadian rhythm), and vitamin D.
No Down-Time
- Many children are in so many organized activities that they don’t have time to “be” or spend time with their families.
- This leads to overstimulation, feeling disconnected, and reduced activation of the Default Mode Network in the brain (which helps with attention, empathy, processing sensory experiences, and consolidating memory).
Lack of Movement and Play
- Children need movement to regulate their bodies.
- Play is needed for social skills, cortical development in the brain (emotional regulation, impulse control, planning, critical thinking, etc.), and processing of difficult emotional experiences.
It is important to remember that chronic anxiety is different from typical stress or even mild to moderate amounts of anxiety. All anxiety should not be avoided, some anxious feelings are perfectly healthy and even necessary. When anxiety continuously interferes with everyday functioning, we need to intervene.
Whether you notice your child experiencing anxiety or not, it is important to talk with them about helpful ways to cope when they feel stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed.
- Brainstorm ideas with them about things they can do to help them regulate their stress - things like going for a walk, breathing techniques, drawing (I like to give students prompts like drawing a pumpkin eating a hot dog while walking his pet monkey), journaling, making up a new game or reading - the list of ideas is endless.
- Like any other skill, coping skills need to be practiced to be effective, so try to work these into your everyday routine and practice them when your child is feeling calm.
If you would like to talk more specifically about coping strategies to work on with your child, please feel free to reach out to the school social worker, Crystal Marshall, at [email protected].
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