Social Anxiety and Children: How Parents Can Help

Does this sound familiar? Your daughter is so afraid of school that she locks herself in her room, refusing to go. Your toddler hangs onto your skirt when you drop him off at day care, refusing to talk to or acknowledge anyone else in the room. Your child has mysterious physical symptoms that appear and disappear depending on the day. If this sounds all too familiar, your child may suffer from social anxiety disorder.

Social anxiety disorder, also known as social phobia or SAD, goes beyond the normal shyness or discomfort at social situations that most people face. This is a kind of anxiety that is so intense that your child will begin arranging her life around avoiding social situations at all costs. The overwhelming fear of judgment or embarrassment is so strong it can actually dictate your child’s life unless you step in and help.

Let’s talk more about SAD, how it affects kids, and what the symptoms are. Then we’ll delve into the three main ways you can help your child work through this disorder.

What Is Social Anxiety Disorder?

Social anxiety disorder is often confused with another kind of disorder, known as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). But what separates the two is that SAD is triggered by social situations. Kids with SAD exhibit a forceful fear of public scrutiny, judgment by others, or potential embarrassment in social situations. As kids get older, they may realize that this fear is irrational, yet they lack the necessary coping skills to work through it.

Kids with SAD may begin building their lives around avoiding the situations that trigger anxiety. These situations include:

• Being called on in class
• Public speaking
• Performances
• Dating
• Making phone calls
• Using public restrooms
• Parties
• Eating or drinking in public
• Being teased or criticized
• Meeting new people

Since most of a child’s schooling encapsulates these experiences, children with SAD will begin refusing to go to school. This can be highly detrimental to your child’s academic career, and can lead to considerable strain within the family.

The Symptoms of Social Anxiety Disorder

Kids with social anxiety disorder may exhibit physical and emotional symptoms that make them feel sick, and that alone will prevent them from attending school. Forcing a child with social anxiety to attend school can also trigger a panic attack, which has overwhelming physical and emotional sensations as well. Children who have SAD will begin fretting about a social event weeks in advance. They exhibit a fear of being judged and intense self-consciousness. And, as mentioned above, they will begin avoiding any social situation that causes the fear.

The physical symptoms include nausea and vomiting, shaking and sweating, clammy hands, blushing, and an elevated heart rate and respiration rate. When going through a panic attack, your child may also have racing thoughts, feelings that she could die or feelings that she might pass out.

These physical and emotional symptoms are scary enough in and of themselves; in fact, a lot of kids have trouble combatting anxiety simply because the physical symptoms are enough to make them feel quite scared. This is where you, as the parent, can step in and help your child overcome her fears. Treating SAD without medication can be accomplished in children if you focus on three distinct areas.

Helping Your Child: Make Lifestyle Changes

You should start by implementing two lifestyle changes in your child’s daily routine: limiting her caffeine intake and increasing the amount of sleep she gets. Caffeine is a stimulant that speeds up the processes of the central nervous system. This means that it causes the adrenaline levels in the body to rise and with it, symptoms like increased heart rate and respiration and increased stomach acid production. If your child is already suffering from stomach aches and panic attacks, caffeine will only exacerbate the problem.

Lack of sleep keeps your child from resting and restoring her body to face the challenges of the day. It can lead to decreased school performance, which can also make your child’s fear of school worse. If you child is having trouble sleeping, you should implement some therapeutic techniques to promote restful sleep. A self-help regimen can provide you with the tools you need to make sure your child gets better quantity and quality of sleep.

Helping Your Child: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy, also known as CBT, has been empirically proven to ease the root causes of social anxiety disorder. CBT focuses on the “here and now” rather than past experience to help children deal with social anxiety as it flares up. When your child begins using CBT techniques, she will need to control the symptoms of distress by using a self-help regimen to reduce stress. We’ll talk about these issues in the next section. In this section, we’ll focus on two types of CBT therapy that works well with SAD in kids.

One of the key components of CBT therapy is challenging the destructive thought patterns that kids engage in. For example, if your child says, “I can’t go to school because everyone will laugh at me,” you or the therapist can gently challenge that thought until a positive resolution is made. This can help a child realize that catastrophic thinking rarely (if ever) manifests in reality.

You can also help your child face social situations in a controlled and gradual manner. This is known as exposure therapy, and it can be very helpful in kids with SAD. By gradually becoming desensitized to the cause of their anxiety, kids can, in time, lose their anxiety over it.

Helping Your Child: Stress Reduction through Self-Help

Finally, you can help your child get over her SAD by helping her learn techniques that reduce the overall amount of stress in her life. A self-help program can get you started in the right direction by utilizing stress-busting exercises like diaphragmatic breathing, visualization, meditation, laughter therapy, and other practices. These can be used to halt the onset of a panic attack as well.

By helping your child out in these core areas, you can help her overcome her Social Phobia, and garner valuable life skills that will help her through adulthood.