For children with anxiety disorders, the path ahead can be daunting and very scary. This is especially true when it comes to school. The anxious child doesn’t want his or her peers to know about an anxiety disorder so the anxious child spends a lot of time worrying hiding the challenge. If the child is having anxious feelings, those feelings can soon turn into a panic attack with physical manifestations. It is critical for anxious students to build confidence in themselves, knowing that there will be an end to the anxious feelings if they forge ahead and through the anxious feelings.
This can be very difficult for anxious students to do on their own. Having a guidance counselor, teacher or other trusted individual available to the student in their time of need can be a difference-maker. It takes time to build that trusting relationship. The student and their parents or others in their lives have to take the first step, confident that they will overcome that first hurdle and move on to the next. It’s not an easy thing to do, particularly when you’re trying to hide your challenge from everyone around you in school.
Having a plan is really important. It can give the student the comfort they need to succeed. If your student is in public school, they may qualify for special services or be entitled to a 504 Education Plan for support. The best course of action is to reach out to your student’s school and see what support is available. If your student has a therapist or doctor supporting them, they can often help with the process of getting support in the school and government programs so that the child can succeed. You can always reach out to us here at Help Child Anxiety, Inc. and we will give you our best recommendation as to how we think your student could proceed.
Never give up. Meet the challenge head-on and overcome it with the help of the trusted people around you. If you don’t trust the people around you, keep trying to find the people you can trust. Sometimes is takes a village to help a child with anxiety succeed.
