Symptoms Of Childhood Anxiety And Why It Has Increased With The Pandemic

Childhood anxiety is described as an anguish similar to that experienced by adults but, unlike the ways adults respond, the little ones do not have as many emotional resources to deal with it, so child anxiety symptoms are difficult to detect and can confuse parents .

With the arrival and establishment in our lives of the pandemic, this disorder has also skyrocketed, so it is vitally important to have the greatest amount of information available to tackle one of the most common diseases of the 21st century as soon as possible.

Symptoms of childhood anxiety in children under 3 years of age

As you can imagine, the smaller your baby is, the greater the difficulty in finding the symptoms. However, there are a number of changes in behavior that should be taken into account:

• Insomnia

• startles

• separation anxiety

• Incontinence

• pathological dissatisfaction

• Aggression with other babies

Symptoms of child anxiety in children over 3 years of age

• Sudden changes in character (for example, the child was very calm and suddenly becomes aggressive)

• Apathy with respect to those hobbies that you liked previously

• Insomnia

• Sudden weight changes that can mask eating problems

• Memory and concentration problems

• In adolescents, drug and alcohol use

• Suicidal thoughts (although this one is hard to identify)

• school failure

Why is anxiety in children increasing?

If some problems such as obesity or a sedentary lifestyle were already part of the concerns of millions of parents on half the planet, anxiety in children after the pandemic has become a constant .

Among the causes is the fact of spending more time in the family home which, in many cases, is not large enough for families of four or five people to live without having friction with each other. And it is that mood swings is the characteristic that has defined children who have lived through the confined pandemic .

Along with this, changes in sleep habits and insomnia stand out as one of the consequences of having less mobility and spending less time outdoors.

If this last generation was already characterized by a sedentary lifestyle, the impossibility of going to school or extracurricular activities for months has further aggravated this situation.

How can the parent identify if their child has childhood anxiety?

Anxiety is an essential defense mechanism for life. However, an excess can achieve just the opposite of what this defense mechanism should, it paralyzes .

Given this, parents have to be observant . If your child suddenly changes character, has mood swings or stops doing what he was fascinated with before, it may be that he has a problem.

To diagnose whether it is child anxiety or another disorder, a professional will be able to give all the necessary clues.