As you may have gathered from last week’s post, it’s been a hard couple of weeks for me. If you read my personal site, then you know the back-story, and if you haven’t read it I can sum it up: Life has hit us from all sides. The biggest struggle right now has been with my middle child, my youngest son. He’s always been our most sensitive child, and this year has seen him dealing with anxiety. He had a few-day bout of it in the fall, but we worked through it and everything has been fine.
Two weekends ago something snapped, likely due to the fact that we had a power outage and a barfing little sister all at the same time. He, well, he freaked. Especially because this all happened while my husband and I were out at a concert. Thankfully (SO THANKFULLY), the babysitter on duty was their 23-year-old Auntie, and not one of the young teenage girls we often use.
Since then, he’s been worried about things that have happened in the past, and things that have never happened but might possibly happen in the future. He’s worried he might barf/slip on the ice/hurt himself, etc. It’s also come out that a couple of kids on the playground were a little extra rough while playing hockey and soccer and he’s afraid that will happen again. He’s missed a lot of school as he doesn’t want to be away from us and has been constantly clutching his stomach and crying, while saying that his tummy hurts.
It’s been hard.
We’ve spent hours and hours talking to him and reassuring him and trying to get him to focus on the good stuff. We’ve been working with his teacher (She is AMAZING) to get him back to school. We met with our family Doctor (also a family friend) on Tuesday to make sure there was nothing physically wrong, and that helped my son to know that he was not sick, but just worried. We also have an appointment tomorrow with another woman we know who is a child psychologist, and who has given us some good tips over the phone in the meantime.
I may know my kids better than anyone else, but this has been a harsh lesson that I can’t always make it better, no matter how hard I try. He knows how much we love him, and I think he’d be in much rougher shape if that weren’t so concrete in his mind. We saw some improvement yesterday, so there’s hope, but I don’t think we’re out of the woods quite yet. That’s why we’ve called in the troops.
Have you ever had to deal with this (and have any advice)? Do you find it easy or hard to ask for help?
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I have never been in your situation before, but I know my anxiety when my son is sick, and that’s nothing compared to the helplessness you must be feeling. My thoughts are with you and your family!
Rebecca´s last [type] ..it’s a…
I’m actually the one with the anxiety issues, not my kids. I think I would find it a lot easier to ask for help for them. For me? It’s almost impossible to ask for help. I always feel like I need to just suck it up because it’s not a “real” problem, and if other people can get through it on their own, I should be able to as well. If it was one of my kids? I would talk to whoever I had to about whatever kind of help I could get them.
I wish I had anything helpful to say, but no advice here. Things will get better. He’s very lucky to have you pulling for him.
Jessica´s last [type] ..It IS "Award Season", After All.
I manage anxiety with my middle child also, on a daily basis, so I’ll tell you what has helped him :) Each kid is different and for us it was just a matter of trying different things til we hit a method that worked and helped him. Things that help are a consistent routine in everyday life, talking lots when he needs to…with this one I had to learn language to give him and how to talk him out of the anxious thinking spiral into more stable ground. We’re now working on helping him with his ‘head talk’ so he can talk himself out of that spiral when stuff happens and I’m not there. If he’s becoming anxious about events or feeling too overwhelmed with school activities, I help him write up his own schedule. If he’s doing the ‘sore tummy’ and not wanting to go to school, as happens at the beginning of every term and after any time spent at home being sick, I do make him go, but we agree that I will tell his teacher he’s having a bad day, and he can come home if it gets worse. I find that the longer he stays out of school, the harder it is to get him to go back at all. Keeping dialogue open with the teaching staff is essential, as is giving him enough at home one-on-one time with me and with his dad as well. There was an excellent resilience program run by some children’s mental health workers through the school, and Ben got flagged for that. They did excellent training with the kids, teaching them how to recognise and change negative thinking patterns, how to recognise the physical signs of anxiety (eg. sore tummy, tight chest) and relaxation techniques to help relieve these signs. He also enjoys yoga a lot, and gets a lot of relief and enjoyment from that. A bit long I’m sorry, but I wanted to throw out to you everything that helps us and see if it can help you! I also have anxiety, as does my son’s dad, so we are trying to raise him to know what to do with his mental health, so it doesn’t have the impact on his life that ours did on our childhood. It is a huge step you’ve taken getting him diagnosed and treated now, and he’ll thank you for it when he’s older. These skills are so easily learnt by a child’s flexible brain compared to an adults- what you’re doing is definitely setting him up for a much brighter future :D