As kids grow up, they move from a state of complete dependence to one of independence. Clinginess in young children therefore doesn’t come as a surprise to most parents: Kids rely on their parents for support and safety, so it’s normal for them to become anxious at the prospect of separation. If your child seems significantly more clingy ...
Like adults, kids often feel overwhelmed by the many commitments, choices, and interpersonal situations they must manage each day. Research suggests that school-aged children also experience significant anxiety resulting from global crises, such as the pandemic and climate change. Unfortunately, kids have far fewer tools for dealing with chronic stress than adults. Likewise, their still-developing brains are highly susceptible to ...
To the parents of children with learning disabilities, it will come as no surprise that anxiety often goes hand in hand with learning problems. Of course, some degree of worry and fear is to be expected when a child’s academic performance is compromised. Having to face frustration and uncertainty every day at school would, after all, make anyone nervous. ...
Discussions about returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic often revolve around helping children (and their families) stay physically healthy while participating in classroom learning. For many kids, however, the mental health implications of going back to school are equally challenging. Though some children eagerly anticipate seeing their friends again, others are experiencing profound anxiety about how their lives will ...
Sometimes classroom behavior problems signal giftedness. Brad and Karen were at their wits end. Their grade school children once again ...
The human brain processes all sensory information whether or not you are fully aware of it. Most children are able ...
As a psychologist living and working in Toronto, where 51% of residents were born outside Canada, I deal with immigration related ...
Anxiety is challenging to endure no matter where your child is. At school, however, it can quickly become intolerable. Many otherwise bright, ambitious children fail to achieve their full academic potential because the education system is not set up to meet their needs. If you have an introverted and worry-prone child, you therefore need to be proactive in preparing him (...
For parents and teens alike, adolescence is a nerve-wracking time. Given the succession of rapid physical and psychological changes teens go through, it’s understandable that they tend to be anxious and pensive from time to time. For some teens, however, this anxiety becomes chronic and even debilitating. If your teen is one of the 25% who live with an anxiety ...
No matter how much parents try to protect their children from the reality of death, most children gain an awareness of it by the time they reach school age; they witness it in fiction, by seeing dead insects, birds, and other animals, or through catching it depicted on television. While very young children may not fully understand what death means, ...
There are many theories trying to explain why we see such a rapid increase in the rates of anxiety among children. Regardless of the explanations, the fact remains that child anxiety is on the rise and we now see more and more young children - often as young as 5-6 years old - with clinical levels of anxiety. Parenting chronically ...
