What causes children’s anxiety?
Parents often worry that they have somehow caused their child’s anxiety – that it is their ‘fault’. It’s true that parents can influence whether or not a child develops anxiety, but the causes of children’s anxiety are complex.
All children feel anxious or worried sometimes. Anxiety is a normal part of human experience. Anxiety plays a vital part in the life-saving alarm system which helps keep us safe when faced with risk or threat by preparing us for a protective response. We want children to feel alert and watchful when they are crossing the road, for example.
However, sometimes children’s anxiety response is not in proportion to the actual threat or challenge they are facing. Their alarm can get stuck in the ON position and start getting in the way of doing the things they need (or want) to do. Too much anxiety around roads and traffic might lead a child to feel scared about (or avoid) everyday activities like going to school or leaving the house or travelling by car.
Anxiety doesn’t affect every child equally – both nature and nurture are at work here. A child’s anxiety is likely to be a combination of several different factors.
Genetic factors
Some children are born with a highly reactive amygdala (the part of the brain that triggers our fight/flight/freeze response). A susceptibility to anxiety is part of their genetic make up. These children are often quicker to see signs of potential danger.
Some babies are born with a more anxious temperament. These children often find anything new, or changes in routine, upsetting.
Anxiety does run in families – partly due to these inherited genetic factors. These genetic influences don’t predetermine that a child will definitely develop anxiety but they do make them more predisposed to it.
Stressful life events
Some children experience traumatic or stressful life events that directly contribute to the development of anxiety – such as a child who is stung by a bee developing an extreme fear of flying insects, for example. Or exposure to traumatic experiences – like bullying. This does not mean that a child will inevitably develop anxiety, but it does make it more likely.
Everyday learning
Then there are other more everyday learning experiences that can also contribute to escalating or maintaining children’s natural anxiety. This would include watching others (including parents) and observing how they respond to anxiety-provoking situations. Children might observe an older sibling worrying about exams and learn to worry about tests and exams too. Or learn from their parents’ obsessive hand-washing to be frightened of dirt, for example. Repeated messages of danger or threat amplify anxiety (which is one of the reasons for the spike in children’s anxiety during and after the pandemic).
Accidental reinforcement
Sometimes children’s expressions of anxiety can be accidentally reinforced by the people around them through a rewarding consequence. For example, a child who doesn’t want to join in at a birthday party who receives cuddles and treats from Grandma to distract them. Expressing anxiety results in an experience that feels good (the cuddles and talking) which might contribute to that child repeating that anxious response the next time they are in a social group. The child isn’t doing this deliberately, it’s just the way children’s brains learn.
The avoidance cycle
When children are distressed, our natural instinct as parents is to try to take that distress away. So, if our child is really anxious or upset about going somewhere new, we might try encouraging them or persuading them or even become impatient with them – or we might agree to let let them not go because they are too distressed.
The short term result of avoidance is that our child feels better. But what they have learnt in the long term is that the way to feel better is to avoid anxiety-provoking situations. (They might also have learnt that the more distressed they become, the more likely it is that we will allow them to avoid a situation). So, in the long term, avoidance escalates anxiety and reduces confidence.
Negative expectations
Sometimes our words and actions can make an anxious response from our child more likely. For instance, if a tween has struggled on sleepovers in the past and these have resulted in fraught phone calls and late night dashes to pick them up, their parent will naturally feel a bit nervous when the next sleepover comes around. You might ask them once too often how they are feeling about it or reassure them repeatedly that it will be ok – accidentally sending the message that there is something to worry about and that we are not at all confident that they will be able to handle it. Our negative expectations, although understandable, can make it more likely that our child will become fearful.
Parents don’t create children’s anxiety. As I said, the causes of anxiety are complex – and some of those causes are completely beyond our control. I certainly don’t want you to think is that if you have done any of the above, then your child’s anxiety is your fault!
But as an important factor in children’s environments, parents do play a crucial role in:
- modelling positive ways to respond to challenges,
- providing opportunities for children to develop competence and confidence
- signalling our belief in their capacity to rise to challenges.
We can’t change children’s temperament or their past experiences, but we can be mindful of the influence our words and actions might have on escalating or de-escalating children’s anxiety.
If you want help supporting your child with anxiety, we offer specialised coaching and an online course: Supporting Children with Anxiety
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