Anxious child with constant stomach aches/staying home from school

[Anonymous]

Our 9 y/o son has always had some anxiety, and has seen a therapist who is mildly helpful. In the past few months, we've had a bit more stress at home due to two grandparents falling ill at the same time. This seems to have ramped up his anxiety. In the past few weeks, he has had nearly constant stomach aches. We took him to the doctor a few times and had blood work done, and all has been clear. The pediatrician thinks it almost certainly is caused by anxiety, and said it's not even worth a referral to the pediatric GI (and wait time is a few months anyway).

On Monday, he went home from school with a stomach ache and has refused to go back to school, saying his stomach hurts too much and he's afraid of going to the nurse. He starts crying uncontrollably when we try to get him to go to school in the morning. Although he always has had some anxiety, nothing like this ever happened before.

We're really at a loss here. I've scheduled him for a psychiatry consult next week, but even if medication is the best option, who knows how long it will take to kick in. We could just put our foot down and yell at him that he has to go to school. I really don't know what to do. interested in hearing from anyone who had a similar experience.

[Anonymous]

I was a kid with a lot of anxiety. And it helped a lot to hear from my parents that I could come home. And from school counselor that I could leave class and come to their office. The knowledge that I could leave at any time meant a lot less worry about going. And honestly, the toughest part for me was the going. Once I was there it was usually fine.

[Anonymous]

Have you spoken with the school counselor? If not, try to get in touch today to put a plan in place for Monday. Ours had some great and effective ideas for handling school refusal and it’s harder to return the longer they’re away.

Absolutely pursue help outside of school as well, but the counselor may really be able to help.

[Anonymous]

What did the therapist suggest? I’m sorry, this is a tough situation and you didn’t mention your own schedule, but it can’t be easy to unexpectedly have your child at home instead of school.


Is your son going to school and then coming home with stomach pain? Or refusing to go altogether? Sometimes the school nurse can be helpful here with coping strategies while at school.

[Anonymous]

Is he being bullied

[Anonymous]

It can’t hurt to read the book “Breaking Free is Childhood Anxiety” by I think Eli Lebowitz? From Yale. The framing of accommodation (bad) vs scaffolding (helpful) was really helpful for me even if hard to implement. And there are some good anecdotes of how to ride through the resistance when you remove accommodations (like getting to stay home from school).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: and has seen a therapist who is mildly helpful.

Tell us more, OP. It sounds like your son's situation is getting worse, not better.

[Anonymous]

I am so sorry. We had the same situation 15 years ago and I posted here! Turned out there was a lot of classroom disruptions and violence going on. He had the correct reaction: anxiety! We got other parents involved and eventually got the disruptive, violent student assigned to a private placement but it almost caused me to lose my job as I spent so much time on it! Find out what the classroom and school environment is like before you do anything else.

[Anonymous]

I think it can be helpful in my brain to remember not to respond to anxiety like pain, even when it’s pain, and more like a physical disability kind of.

Like if your kid broke their leg you would be all about keeping it protected while it healed, right? No walking, etc.

But if your kid were missing a leg you would be all about helping them figure out how to do things anyway right? Not by pretending they had two legs or not acknowledging the difficulty, but by figuring out supports and how to get by. I think anxiety is kind of like that, or at least that’s the message I took from the Lebowitz book.

[Anonymous]

Your pediatrician is an idiot. If a child complains of that much pain, a consult with a pediatric gastro should be done. You need the referral ASAP, if you tell me that it takes that long to get an appointment.

[Anonymous]

Most medication will kick in pretty quickly. You could even try something like Xanax for immediate effect. (Not a long-term solution and obviously a prescription is required, but don't lack hope on medication being an answer here).

[Anonymous]

My teen has some anxiety and also stomach issues. Our case might be different, but I think it's like this: She is very sensitive and any indigestion is immediately very focused on, and when you place heightened attention to pain, it's kind of amplified.

My recommendation is to see if placebo works: Try giving Tums or something even more placebo-ish, but with a lot of assurances that it will work, and kind of try to get him to relax and not be so vigilant about his symptoms. It may also help to make some changes to his diet, to make sure nothing is really causing the indigestion. Also, can you be sure that there are no issues with allergies or dairy? My teen recently developed a lot of allergies, and I'm wondering if that's connected.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you need to find out what’s going on. Is it a GI issue? Bullying? Is it just him (mental issue)? Is school too hard or easy? How is his home and social life? Is his vision and hearing ok? It could be many things.

[Anonymous]

My DD had stomach pains in middle school and it was frustrating because I couldn’t tell if they were “real” or stress related. It was stress. She was having a tough time socially at school. Her school counselor at school and the nurse both decided it have her sit out her anxiety in the nurse’s office then she’d go back to class. I don’t know if your son has an in school counselor? It also sounds like he doesn’t feel comfortable with the nurse. DD started seeing a counselor outside of school once a week and I think that person really helped her deal with her anxiety issues. It did take a while in part because my DD was not addressing stress head on (hence the stomach and head aches) and so it took a while for the counselor to figure out what the cause of the anxiety was. DD went to high school and did very well socially. She asked me why I didn’t move her out of that middle school earlier. I don’t know if that would have helped her anxiety or not but in hindsight I wish I had.
Try to find out what is going on at school. Your son may not be able to verbalize it (DD never did tell me exactly what was happening) but other parents or siblings might.

[Anonymous]

I had this problem as a kid although I didn’t realize what it was until I was much older. I was around 9 or 10 and I know now I had anxiety. No one talked about it back in the 80s though. I was having serious trouble sleeping. Reading made me feel better so after my parents were in bed, I’d turn on my lamp and read all night to keep my mind off the fact that I wasn’t sleeping. I had stomach aches all the time, especially at night and at school. We didn’t have a school nurse so I’d get sent to the school secretary’s office until my mom could pick me up. There was nothing physically wrong with me. There was nothing out of the ordinary that explained the anxiety.

OP: Society is different now than when I was a kid. Contact the school and see if there’s a way to build in some safe times for your son. Maybe breakouts with the school counselor or arrange with the teachers to allow him to leave class to use the bathroom/go in the hall when he needs to calm down or is feeling overwhelmed. Maybe having a plan for school will make it easier to get him to return. And work with a psychiatrist to get to the root of the issue and to explore ways to handle this (including potentially medication).