Impact Anxiety blog logo

Guiding parents and teachers to navigate the challenges of Anxiety

Anxiety is thought to be the most common mental health or neurodevelopmental condition worldwide. Even outside of a global pandemic and other stress-inducing aspects of societal upheaval, the pace and expectations of modern society seem to be causing a steady rise in symptoms of anxiety across the globe. Parents are worried, teachers are stressed, and their students are getting increasingly more anxious. Anxiety can significantly (cont'd below)

Filter by Focus Area

Leading Articles about Managing Anxiety

mother daughter worried watching new

Don’t Know What to Say to Kids about Civil Unrest and Tragic Events? Foster Critical Thinking

By Elaine Taylor-Klaus

My daughter called me on January 6, 2021, in the midst of the most profound civil unrest any US citizen…

CONTINUED
Shifting Expectations

Shift Your Expectations to Manage Complex Kids

By Elaine Taylor-Klaus

“The greatest gift you can give yourself, and your child with ADHD, Anxiety, or other challenges, is to acknowledge that…

CONTINUED
Helping kids manage stress

Helping Complex Kids Manage Stress in a Stressful World

Interview with Mary Anne Richey

In today’s chaotic world, stress is an unfortunate fact of life, for us and our kids. For complex kids, it…

CONTINUED
Emotions Get Intense

What to Do When Emotions Get Intense

By Diane Dempster

A Plan Of Calm Emotional intensity can be a huge issue in families of complex kids. Sometimes it’s the kids…

CONTINUED
What to do when kids push back

4 Ways to Know When Kids are Stressed or Overwhelmed

By Elaine Taylor-Klaus and Diane Dempster

Diane:So underneath a lot of challenges that we’re facing with our kids is what I would call overwhelming stress. But…

CONTINUED

Let Go, Control Freak Parent!

By Elaine Taylor-Klaus

When Control becomes Control Freak When life gets crazy in ADHD families, the natural tendency for some of us is…

CONTINUED
Kids Have Trouble Getting Started

4 Reasons Anxious Kids Have Trouble Getting Started

By Elaine Taylor-Klaus

No Magic Tricks Here Like so many challenges our kids face, I cannot wave a magic wand and change my…

CONTINUED

When You Worry About Everything

By Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Do you have a tendency to “bleed before you’re cut”? I mean … Do you worry about everything? Do you…

CONTINUED
Stress Management

Stress Management for Women!

By Diane Dempster

First, we want to say that we did not write this. We do not know who did, but if you…

CONTINUED

(continued) impair a student’s availability to learning; its close companion, stress, can reduce the effectiveness of an adult’s communication. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), nearly 1 in 3 of all adolescents ages 13 to 18 will experience an anxiety disorder; the Anxiety and Depression Association of America puts the number for adults at 1 in 5.

Many strategies are offered to help children, teens and adults manage the symptoms of anxiety, including: medications, stress management training, meditation and mindfulness practices, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), some forms of coaching, sleep hygiene, and breathing techniques. New and promising CBD research is revealing potential options for support in addition to commonly prescribed medications. As with ADHD and many other conditions impacting children, when parents receive behavior management training, they are better able to create an environment that can effectively support their children and teens with anxiety.

Symptoms of anxiety vary. On one end of the spectrum, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is reflected in more than 3% of the population who tend to feel anxious most days and struggle to remember when they felt relaxed. Social anxiety is another form of anxiety that occurs specifically in certain social dynamics.

On the other end of the spectrum, anxiety is a symptom of other mental health conditions such as panic disorders, post traumatic stress disorder, phobias, or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Anxiety also commonly coexists in children and teens with other health and learning conditions such as ADHD, learning disabilities, autism and depression. Again, according to the NIH, between 2007 and 2012, anxiety disorders in children and teens went up 20%.