My daughter (6yo) has been an anxious child for years. We recently had a baby and the past two weeks she has been going to the clinic saying her stomach hurt - it's an almost daily occurrence. Her teacher emailed me this afternoon expressing her concern. I know it's stress and anxiety-related but I don't know what to do or tell my daughter. I feel awful that she's feeling this way but I'm at a loss. Any advice???

Anonymous wrote:Can I ask a question to those experienced parents with anxious children? My child suffers from some classic anxiety symptoms -- recurrent unexplained stomach aches, and chronic insomnia. Yet she really never seems anxious about anything in particular -- does not avoid school or other activities, does not express anxiety, etc. She's 8. Is this anxiety? If so, any suggestions on how to work through the issues when I don't know what the issues are?

This sounds more like a medical issue. The garden variety would be food or environmental allergies.

Anonymous wrote:Can I ask a question to those experienced parents with anxious children? My child suffers from some classic anxiety symptoms -- recurrent unexplained stomach aches, and chronic insomnia. Yet she really never seems anxious about anything in particular -- does not avoid school or other activities, does not express anxiety, etc. She's 8. Is this anxiety? If so, any suggestions on how to work through the issues when I don't know what the issues are?

Not being snarky at all, but are you sure this isn't some sort of bad reaction to food? Or maybe some other allergy? Because kids who are anxious... express it. At least mine does. Hmmm.

Can I ask a question to those experienced parents with anxious children? My child suffers from some classic anxiety symptoms -- recurrent unexplained stomach aches, and chronic insomnia. Yet she really never seems anxious about anything in particular -- does not avoid school or other activities, does not express anxiety, etc. She's 8. Is this anxiety? If so, any suggestions on how to work through the issues when I don't know what the issues are?

NP again: Here is a sample chapter from a book that has more on validation and how to regulate yourself when there is an outburst. Again, geared to handling BPD but also helpful for dealing with anxiety.

http://www.ticllc.org/uploads/Loving_Someone_with_BPD-sample_chapter.pdf

NP with child subject to severe anxiety attacks, which I horribly mishandled at first. Validation is one of the best tools I have learned. This is used a lot for dealing with people with borderline personality disorders.

Here is an introductory slide share for the technique: http://www.slideshare.net/bondobbs/i-ammad-emotional-validation-skill?next_slideshow=1

If you do some more Googling you will find more. "Stop Walking on Eggshells" is a very good book about this--just adapt it to anxiety.

Np here. 9:45, thanks for your post. My dd is anxious, possibly worse and it has set our whole family on a roller coaster that I wish I could jump off of. I hope she follow your pat. And I wish I could do better to stay calm when she is melting down.

I've posted this before... I was one of these kids. Throwing up, crying before school, panicking for no reason, worrying over crazy/silly stuff, like whether we'd ever find our car again in a parking lot. I was NUTS. I am more relaxed in my 30s than I was as a 5 year old, if you can believe that! And I've noticed my daughter is somewhat similar. So my advice to you parents is:

Take a deep breath. It's going to be ok. It's not your fault.

I was like this, my poor mother had no clue what to do about it and pretty much couldn't do anything about it, and in the end everything is ok. I'm married, I have a good job, my life is good, and I'm a very mellow, content person. I think part of this is having to deal with those anxious feelings as a child, then teen, then college student - I had to resolve this issue in order to move on with my life. And I did.

So keep it calm. This may be something you cannot resolve FOR your kids, they may have to do it for themselves. And that's ok. Just model handling feelings for them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lat year - 2nd grade, DD went through about 2+ months of school refusal and anxiety.

My stomach churns every time I think about how I treated her in the first few weeks of the anxiety attack. I dragged her to school and let the counselor pull her off me and whisk her away to her class without really slowing down to teach her how to deal with her feelings. I finally realized she felt very alone at school with her sister moving up to the middle school and her nest friend being friends with others and not knowing how to share.

I look back at how unhelpful our pediatrician was (she gave DD an anxiety workbook and a pep talk), how impossible it was to meet with a psychologist, that the school looked at me like Crazy-psycho-mom and school staff telling me to get her to school at no cost or the anxiety will escalate. Those months were some of my darkest - I HATE, HATE, HATE myself for not being more patient, understanding and most importantly compassionate that she felt so alone at school.

Whoa, PP. How could you have known? You talk about showing more compassion to your DD, but you need to show compassion to yourself too. These things are just plain hard and I am sure you did the very best you could. We all do the best we can and we learn as we go along. Please be kind to yourself.

I know.... but thanks. It was just really hard...

16:01 again. I know. BTDT and feel in the midst of it again right now, because anxiety comes and goes. Just encouraging you to be gentle with yourself because (in my experience) it's easy to get overwhelmed with guilt. I have found the Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents book very helpful. Take care.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lat year - 2nd grade, DD went through about 2+ months of school refusal and anxiety.

My stomach churns every time I think about how I treated her in the first few weeks of the anxiety attack. I dragged her to school and let the counselor pull her off me and whisk her away to her class without really slowing down to teach her how to deal with her feelings. I finally realized she felt very alone at school with her sister moving up to the middle school and her nest friend being friends with others and not knowing how to share.

I look back at how unhelpful our pediatrician was (she gave DD an anxiety workbook and a pep talk), how impossible it was to meet with a psychologist, that the school looked at me like Crazy-psycho-mom and school staff telling me to get her to school at no cost or the anxiety will escalate. Those months were some of my darkest - I HATE, HATE, HATE myself for not being more patient, understanding and most importantly compassionate that she felt so alone at school.

Whoa, PP. How could you have known? You talk about showing more compassion to your DD, but you need to show compassion to yourself too. These things are just plain hard and I am sure you did the very best you could. We all do the best we can and we learn as we go along. Please be kind to yourself.

I know.... but thanks. It was just really hard...

Anonymous wrote:Lat year - 2nd grade, DD went through about 2+ months of school refusal and anxiety.

My stomach churns every time I think about how I treated her in the first few weeks of the anxiety attack. I dragged her to school and let the counselor pull her off me and whisk her away to her class without really slowing down to teach her how to deal with her feelings. I finally realized she felt very alone at school with her sister moving up to the middle school and her nest friend being friends with others and not knowing how to share.

I look back at how unhelpful our pediatrician was (she gave DD an anxiety workbook and a pep talk), how impossible it was to meet with a psychologist, that the school looked at me like Crazy-psycho-mom and school staff telling me to get her to school at no cost or the anxiety will escalate. Those months were some of my darkest - I HATE, HATE, HATE myself for not being more patient, understanding and most importantly compassionate that she felt so alone at school.

Whoa, PP. How could you have known? You talk about showing more compassion to your DD, but you need to show compassion to yourself too. These things are just plain hard and I am sure you did the very best you could. We all do the best we can and we learn as we go along. Please be kind to yourself.

Lat year - 2nd grade, DD went through about 2+ months of school refusal and anxiety.

My stomach churns every time I think about how I treated her in the first few weeks of the anxiety attack. I dragged her to school and let the counselor pull her off me and whisk her away to her class without really slowing down to teach her how to deal with her feelings. I finally realized she felt very alone at school with her sister moving up to the middle school and her nest friend being friends with others and not knowing how to share.

I look back at how unhelpful our pediatrician was (she gave DD an anxiety workbook and a pep talk), how impossible it was to meet with a psychologist, that the school looked at me like Crazy-psycho-mom and school staff telling me to get her to school at no cost or the anxiety will escalate. Those months were some of my darkest - I HATE, HATE, HATE myself for not being more patient, understanding and most importantly compassionate that she felt so alone at school.

Thanks for sharing this. A lot of these reminded me of strategies in the book Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents. It's a great book for parents.

Those are great! Thanks for sharing!

Interesting - and short - information about parenting a children with anxiety. As an educator I found these interesting and will share them with parents of children who are anxious.

Thought I'd share!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-jain/9-things-every-parent-with-an-anxious-child-should-try_b_5651006.html