If your child is experiencing anxiety, there are some signs you might be able to identify. Working with a mental health professional to address your child’s anxiety can help the whole family. Here’s an excerpt from a PsychCentral article on warning signs of anxiety in children. If you recognize your own child in this piece and you live in the greater Cleveland area, we hope you’ll reach out.
Parents would know if their child is anxious, right? You’d probably see obvious signs, right? Your child would express all their fear and worries. They would be afraid all the time.
Sometimes, parents miss it altogether. Unfortunately, anxiety isn’t always that obvious. Some children don’t vocalize their worries. They don’t show their fears. And anxiety isn’t on their parents’ radar.
In my child therapy practice, parents often bring their children in for other reasons, only to discover that the problem is actually anxiety. Here are child anxiety symptoms that are sometimes missed:
1. They Experience Physical Symptoms.
Anxiety isn’t just in our minds, it is in our body as well. Here are a few examples:
Your child won’t poop. They have been constipated for weeks. You’ve been to the doctor and there is no medical origin.
Your child’s stomach hurts. They feel like throwing up. They are having gastrointestinal problems. You brought them to the pediatrician. You went to the gastrointestinal specialist. Your child has been poked, prodded and maybe even scoped. No medical origin has been found.