Accommodating Your Anxious Child in School and Home
written by Dr. Liz Matheis, published on Psychology Today
Anxiety can be a debilitating emotional experience. It has the ability to take a pleasant moment and turn it into a disaster with all of the “what ifs” that could happen. Anxiety lies, and it creates a sense of danger or incredible discomfort in daily life that is exhausting and can be debilitating and limiting.
Since March 2020, anxiety for our children, teens, and young adults has reached disturbingly high levels. Masks, social distancing, vaccinations, etc. have been a part of our daily language, thoughts, and conversation. We fear for the academic skills that our children have lost as well as the social and emotional experiences that our children have missed due to isolation, quarantine, and shutdowns.
Since September 2020, many of our children, teens, and young adults have needed extra support in school due to the high levels of anxiety that have resulted in school phobia, avoidance, and emotional shutdown. Children who were once high achievers stopped logging into classes, turning in assignments, completing homework, participating in class lessons, and studying for exams. Our children and teens did not wish to turn their cameras on or participate in class discussions because of the perceived direct focus on each child and the attention that was created. Our kids struggled to keep up with the list of assignments listed on different online portals such as Google Classroom. How many children, including my own, have had difficulty in uploading a document and hitting “submit”? Many. Too many.