How School Anxiety can affect children and teenagers

In today’s time, education is considered very important for kids to create a better future for them. School-going kids can experience no. Of challenges regardless of their age, level, educational performance, personality type, and intelligence. Such can affect their physical, emotional or mental health, learning, relationships and overall personality. Challenges faced by school-going kids can be identified by the symptoms the child is experiencing or exhibiting Parents, teachers, and Friends can be a great support system for kids to overcome such challenges. When these challenges get overlooked by then it can lead to serious health or mental health concerns or illnesses for kids. Being aware of children’s social, personal and educational life can make it easier for them to figure out such challenges. School anxiety is one such challenge faced by school-going children. Let’s talk about it in detail –

What is School Anxiety?

School anxiety is a condition that manifests as an excessive fear of school or school-going activities such as taking test, speaking in public, making friends, and leaving parents during school hours. In School anxiety pressure can be because of inside or outside of-classroom factors. It becomes difficult for the child to focus in the class or complete task. This Anxiety tends to lock up the brain and it becomes very difficult for the child to interact with others or participate in activities. This excessive fear of school dictates their overall academic life.

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Doctors may refer to it as School Anxiety or school refusal. It’s obvious that kids experience fear when they go to school first time or join any new school and it gets settled with time. But Sometimes this school fear becomes excessive and it starts impacting children academic performance and attending the classes on a regular basis. Till now, School refusal is not a recognized mental health condition. However, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) notes that this symptom can have an association with several other diagnoses, including:

• Depression
• Social anxiety disorder
• Generalized anxiety disorder
• Specific phobia
• Oppositional defiant disorder
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Signs of School Anxiety:

1) Emotional Change:

A significant emotional change can be observed in children with School anxiety such as getting easily upset, irritated or angry on small situations that normally do not bother them. They can experience constant feeling of uneasiness during school hours and even after school time. Children can respond unexpectedly to avoid fear or perceived threatening situations. They can also have irrational fear which makes them feel overwhelmed from time to time.

2) Physical Changes:

Physical signs can include headache, stomach ache, nausea, Dizziness, Body ache, upset stomach, and change in diet, excessive fatigue or unexplained illness. It’s difficult to find any pattern in physical signs when it comes to identifying School anxiety. For identifying physical signs person has to collect background information (such as from when they are experiencing such concerns, when these issues get dominant, and even when help is provided does the child feel assured that they are safe or out of danger).

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3) Social Change:

Suddenly students starts to prefer to be isolated and avoid being with friends or in social groups. They find excuses for the same. They starts feeling uncomfortable in people. Staying at home becomes their first preference. Sometimes it is also possible that in social situation or in Stressful situations person feels difficulty in speaking to others or in social settings. It is known as selective mutism. For diagnosing any child for selective mutism it’s very important to collect children’s previous social behaviour history.

4) School refusal:

The most obvious sign of School Anxiety is School refusal. When a child makes every possible effort to avoid going to school. School refusal can be seen in behavior as not being involved in classroom activities, losing contact with the school’s social circle, skipping classes or not being ready to go to school. Serious school refusal can be in the form of temporary or permanent school dropouts.

5) Sleep disturbance:

School Anxiety can lead to sleep disturbances in students. Such as difficulty in initiating or maintaining sleep, nightmares, or experiencing fatigue after getting up in the morning. Sound sleep is very important for person’s mental health and well-being. Research shows that students age of 13 to 18 years must sleep for at least 8 hours each night to function well. Disturbed sleep can make the person feel irritated. For identifying that sleep disturbance is due to anxiety one must understand the sleep pattern of the particular person.

6)Panic Attack:

Panic attack is a type of anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive sweating, tremors in hands, dizziness, numbness in limbs, having trouble breathing, derealisation or feeling as if they are dying or going to be crazy and stomach ache. Not all people who are experiencing anxiety disorder will experience panic attack. Certain people can experience panic attack to some degree and other might not endure this.
It is extremely important for child to get help when child is experiencing panic attack. Classroom teacher must know how to handle such circumstances else situation and symptoms can become even worse.

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7) Poor academic performance:

As child often misses his/her school due to physical symptoms and find it difficult to focus in studies it impacts their academic performance. It can also affect by disturbed sleep, excessive worry. Poor performance can demotivate the child and increase the anxiety even more. It’s important for parents and teachers to provide their full support to complete their left school work to make their performance Better.
Poor academic performance can be seen as difficulty in submitting assignments on time, decrement in grades, constant procrastinating, feeling overwhelmed by school work or difficulty in focusing on task.

8) Assuming the worst:

People in Anxiety become habitual of think the worst scenario and being even more worried. This selective perception of situation can impact their relationship, studying, family and work life. They often think or try to prepare themselves for the worst even when it is not unlikely to happen in reality.

9) Obsession with perfection:

People with school anxiety can become obsessed with perfection and try not to commit mistakes. They want to do their best in whatever they do. They are often in constant pressure to do work with perfection. Such unhealthy perfection can affect a person’s well-being and self-esteem and they form habit of seeking approval form others to ensure perfection.

10) Tantrums:

The child shows tantrums to avoid going to school. Unpredictable behaviour or tantrums can be a sign of School Anxiety. They can say that they are sick avoid classes, and when they reach school they start feeling physical symptoms or crying.
Teachers and parents can focus on the root cause rather than focusing on the Anxiety outburst. Symptoms can be reduced when the root cause is sorted. When child feels safe, and reassured symptoms get reduced.

Forms of School Anxiety:

1) Separation anxiety:

Separation anxiety is common in toddles and young children. They often before fearful when they have to be separate from their parents but general their separation anxiety gets settled till the age of 3 year. Sometime it is also normal that when kids starts going to school for the first time they might experience separation anxiety in the beginning but gradually they get used to the new environment and know they will meet their parents or caregiver after some time. But sometimes this normal anxiety extends into prolonged period. This can affect child’s academic performance, attendance.

Sometimes separation anxiety is also seen in boarding school children for brief period of time. In teenage and adults separation anxiety is less comman and it can affect their work life balance and relationship.

Symptoms of separation anxiety:

• Recurrent and excessive distress of being away from their loved ones
• Excessive worry about losing their loved ones because of any serious illness and disaster
• Constant feeling that something bad will happen to them such as they can be kidnapped, lost which will cause separation from their parents
• Not wanting to go to home without their parents
• Refusing to be away from home
• Recurrent nightmares
• Reluctance or refusal to sleep without their loved ones
• Frequent complaints of headache, stomach ache, and other symptoms when they get to know they are going to be separated or get separated from loved ones.

Separation anxiety can also be associated with panic disorder when a child suddenly feels intense fear, terror, or anxiety which gets to the peak within minutes.

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Causes of separation anxiety:

Separation Anxiety can cause the loss of loved one or stressful life situations. Genetics can also play an important role in this.

Risk factors:

Separation Anxiety disorder can start in young age and can continue till teenage and adulthood.

Risk factors are:

• Life stressors or lose of love once because of death, illness, divorce of parents, siblings going away for studies and breakup.
• Family History: Where blood-related family members had an anxiety disorder or anxiety-related disorder. In such conditions, traits can be inherited from family members.
• Certain temperatures: which are more prone to anxiety disorder then others
• Environmental factors: Any incident of natural disaster where people get injured or die.

Prevention for Separation anxiety:

• Teachers and parents support- Their assurance that they are always there to support the child will help the child in overcoming intense anxiety.
• Seek professional help: when parents, teachers, and children feel that their anxiety is disturbing their life on a larger extent and they are not able to handle this situation by themselves they can go for professional support. Mental health professional which work on the root cause of separation anxiety and child will be able to recover soon with if they follows the plan properly.
• Medical help: When separation anxiety is causing any other mental health concern, such as depression, they should consult the doctor who can provide medicine for the concerns the child is struggling with.

2) Social anxiety:

It is common to be scared or nervous about meeting new people or going in a new environment. But sometimes people experience extreme anxiety when meeting people and they avoid social interaction as they are scared of being judged by other person’s negativity. They become extremely self-conscious. In social anxiety, people tries to avoid such social situation which can significantly affect a person’s life, such as relationship, school or workplace activities, and social gathering.

Symptoms of Social Anxiety:

In social anxiety something physical symptoms can also be associated. Such as:

• Trembling
• Upset stomach or stomach ache
• Excessive sweating
• Increase in heart rate
• Tremors
• Dizziness
• Feeling that mind goes blank
• Trouble in breathing
• Muscle tension
• Uneasiness in body

Behavioral and Emotional Symptoms:

• Worried about being embarrassed publicly or being humiliated
• Fear in the situation where they feel they have chances of being judged negativity
• Intense fear in a social situation
• Avoidance of behavior for stressful situations
• expecting the worst possible of stressful situations and getting worried about it Avoidance behaviour for stressful situations
• interacting with an unfamiliar person
• going for school or work
• attending social gatherings
• dating
• making eye contact
• using public washroom
• eating in front of others

Symptoms can change over period of time and avoidance to situation bring temporary relief from anxiety.

Causes of Social Anxiety:

• Inherited traits: Though till now it’s not clear evidence of genetic or environmental causes of social anxiety. But it is found that anxiety disorders runs in the family. More study in this field is required to understand the actual cause of this.
• Brain structure: The Amygdala plays an important role in controlling fear responses. People who have an overactive amygdala can have frightened fear response and intense anxiety when exposed to stressful situations.
• Environment: Social anxiety can be a learned behavior. Such as it can be because of any past embarrassing social experiment or parents who were uncomfortable in social settings.

Risk Factors:

• Family history: Anxiety disorders can be common in people when any family members or sibling is experiencing this condition.
• Negative life situations: Bullying, peer pressure, rejection or humiliation can lead to social anxiety. In such situations, a person is scared of experiencing a similar experience again in future which freighted them. Conflict in the family, abuse and trauma can also be associated to it.
• Appearance or conditions that draws attention features or habit that easily catches public attention and makes the person feeling awkward. Such as any facial features, stuttering, or tremors due to Parkinson’s.
• Personality traits: if a person has Poor social skills and anxiety-inducing traits in such situations person can experience social anxiety

Prevention:

• Get professional help: when person experiences, social anxiety and recognizes that he/ she is expecting social anxiety they should immediately seek help as delaying can make the symptoms more severe.
• Keep writing journals: keeping a track of life situations can help the professional to figure out the root cause of Anxiety. Also perfect can observe significant change his response over some period of time.
• Setting priorities: prorating what they want in life and how to manage time and emotions can make the situation better. They can do thing that they enjoy and feel relaxed after doing it. This will help them in being more organised in their thought process as they will be able to regular emotions well.

3) Test Anxiety:

Test anxiety is about being fearful of exam or fear of failure in examination. This anxiety includes some physical, behavioural or emotional synonyms which affects person examination performance. It is a psychological conditions in which person experiences extreme distress, worry and anxiety.

Symptoms of test anxiety:

• Cognition/behavioral: A person can go blank, have poor concentration, be confused, or something experience inability to think clearly. Students often report they got blanked in exams even when they studied properly in exams. Confusion can affect person’s performance negativity.
• Physical symptoms: somatic complaints can be of stomach ache, headache, excessive sweating, dizziness, pain in hand while writing, panic attack, nausea or diarrhea.
• Worry and dread: maladaptive condition Such as negative self-talk, frustration, fear of failure, random thoughts and self-condemnation.
• Emotions: feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, worry and anger.

Causes of text anxiety:

• High expectations: pressure on parents, and teachers can lead to fear of poor performance.

• Procrastination: it can also be an important cause of text anxiety. Initially person spend time in procrastinating and later regrets it and find now they does not have time to study or to perform well in exam.

Prevention:

• Study efficiently: organized study practices makes the person more relaxed and productive so when exams are approaching students should focus more being organised in leaning new content.

• Pretest routine: Exams are about speed and accuracy and exposure of this situation more then once make the person be more productive in their final performance.

• Start early for the exam: don’t delay til you become scared of being failed in exam. It’s better to start early and be on the similar pace to understand the whole syllabus.
• Proper sleep: proper sleep is very important for the person as while person sleeps memory traces of learning become stronger and make the person physically fit.
• Take the help of your teachers: when teachers correct copy they get a glimpse of the child’s information and they can explain to the child what they are lacking in performance. The details of learning loops holes can help the person to work on in and perform better in the future.

What does School Anxiety look like in teenagers:

School anxiety look different in teenage then young children. They face different type of issues in teenage such as peer pressure (how their peer group sees them), bullying, worried about their physique and academic performance, puberty issues, attraction and indentation and career information crisis. They often find it difficult to express their feelings to their parents and teachers. Also accepting individual differences something become very hard for them. Few signs (physical, social, emotional etc.) can be similar to young children but they also experience some additional indicators for their school anxiety. A few are mentioned below:

1. Substance abuse
2. Extremely self-conscious
3. Anger issues
4. Trust issues
5. Irritated and overly reactive to Normal situations

Parents and teachers must be aware about these sign as if not handled rightly in present it can lead to serious concerns in future.

What will happen if school anxiety is not handled carefully?

If school anxiety is not handled carefully it can affects person’s life later. Such as easily getting panicked when received any new unfamiliar task, meeting new people, maintaining healthy relationship (as they are in a habit of think worst possibility), Difficulty in being productive in office. Also their negative thinking makes it difficult for them to take right decision on right time. High expectations from self and others makes the situation more challenging for them

Certain level of anxiety is good for children’s performance. But when this anxiety hampers their academic and behaviour performance parents must look into this seriously. It is always easier to handle concerns in initial stage then later.