Social Anxiety In Children Podcast

The power of editing, right? You can make Craig and I sound pretty sharp when you distill down 60 minutes of rambling into 10 minutes of content. I know. Just by nature of this venue, we do try to be concise. We realize that time is precious. And let’s just say a little bit to our listeners.

We just have a ton of respect for our listeners. That they would listen to this is an honor. And we take it as that. No question. Right. We greatly appreciate that. We’ve received feedback and just what a level of gratitude. Yeah, we’re really thankful for the faithful listeners out there.

It’s not just the three of us talking to each other. And you know, Brian, sometimes we’ve had good important feedback and everything that comes through feedback is really taken to heart. All feedback is good, whether it’s glowing feedback or critique. Right. That’s been a really refining thing for me.

The podcast is another one of the things that reminds me that we’re a group. In our day and age, it’s so easy to see ourselves as individualistic, and it’s one of those reminders that can stir discussions across different groups, and I’ve really appreciated that. It’s been challenging at times, but also just very refining and very positive.

We learn from them, and that then bleeds into our podcast, because we’re getting experiences through conversations that we’ve had with our listeners. And so, we’re grateful for sharing our lives together with them and getting to be part of this also. When this was just an idea that we had talked about, to think about it getting to this point a hundred episodes. And the conversation that’s generated, the positive feedback, I don’t think we could have ever dreamed it would have gotten to this point. And so much of that I think is due to our listeners who have faithfully given insight and continue to listen and have been patient with us.

And we’re very grateful. Thanks for being with us. I know you weren’t counting but we were and today’s number 100 and so here we are. And we’ll keep moving forward as God gives us direction and as listeners continue to show interest. And we feel honored to have you along and with that let’s get to today’s content.

We are going to continue as we look at anxiety and anxiety with our children. Few things are as important to us parents as our children, and so we have a tendency to always have on the radar where they’re at developmentally. What’s normal? Pretty sure that those other kids aren’t normal but ours are, right? Yeah. Maybe even above that. Always.

We’re going to zero in on anxiety. And so, when we talk about anxiety, why don’t you briefly explain that term? Because I think quite a bit is locked up there. Do I have a socially anxious child? Well, I don’t know. What does anxiety mean? One way to look at it at a very high level would just be what level of fear or uncomfortableness there is in a social setting.

Okay. You want them to have some sort of a hesitancy when it comes to a new relationship. It’s appropriate to maybe feel out if this is a safe person. Is this not a safe person? And that’s good. But if you’re talking about on an extreme side of things where there’s so much fear and unsettledness that they can hardly say goodbye to grandma and grandpa or go into their Sunday school class with kids that they know. Where the brain is saying, oh, no, danger when it doesn’t really call for that. Yeah, that’s when you’ve moved into the realm of anxiety that’s intense enough that it’s going to hinder their ability to engage in social interactions.

Okay. They’re trying to analyze the crowd. They’re trying to analyze the group of people. They’re trying to look at that, whether it’s the new Sunday school class or the school class, or we’re going to the store, and so they’re looking at people and they’re doing this thought in their head to say, am I going to mess up? Am I going to do something that’s going to embarrass me? Am I going to humiliate myself by a word or by an action? And all of those things are just spiking inside of their head as they’re going through that over and over and over in their head.

You know being five years old is so far removed from me. It’s hard to remember what’s going through their heads. Yeah, when I actually force myself to get back into that I do remember irrational fears that I had in social situations that I just missed. So, I think some of us just don’t have the wherewithal to know what’s going through that tyke’s head. And that’s when talking with them and tapping into what is going on can help you understand if there are fears driving it or they’re more of a kid that’s quiet and quiet is okay.

They’re not avoiding the interaction because of the fear of something. They’re just fine with sitting in the corner reading their book by themselves. That’s not a problem for them at all. So, you’re maybe teasing out the difference of just being introverted. Right. Or maybe shy.

I’m not sure if those words are interchangeable or not. And being socially anxious, those might not be the same thing. I guess I would put shyness on the scale of anxiety. Okay. You know, it kind of goes one way or another. An introvert I’d put in a little bit different personality. Yeah. And another piece of personality that fits in is just how quickly you’re engaged in new situations as another temperament or personality trait that can feed into being shy or anxious but is really separate.

So, if I get to the step of this social place, the introverted child says, I really don’t need to go in there. Yeah, I’m fine. But a socially anxious child says, I’m afraid to go in there. Exactly. Both of them really rather not go in there. But there’s a little bit of difference in motivation there. Yeah.

And if you can understand what the difference is that gives you some idea of where you go with it from there? Yeah. So, there are three things that are important. One is their ability to learn, their ability to make friends, and their ability to have fun. And we look to see if anxiety and social anxiety start to hinder those three areas.

And I think that gives a really good roadmap to figure out what our concern level ought to be. And then to be able to find areas of strength and weakness for that child, because they’ll likely have both. And then you can step into, do we need to help grow their learning or do we need to help them be able to have fun, kind of let down their guard a little bit? Do we need to help with the social piece, like we all need people in our lives.

And I think that’s really helpful. Okay. And so maybe there’s something here for parents too. But, you know, I can sometimes be kind of glad that they don’t want to engage in certain social situations. It’s just a whole lot easier for me. They’re right here. They’re going to stay here. Yeah. I almost have fears of my own. Let me just tell you this one story that happened this past weekend. I was camping and I was out fishing and this little girl who said she just finished her first grade was just talking my ear off. Didn’t know her from Adam. She comes up. And wants a worm and all this and we just have this dialogue. She’s got a walkie talkie around her wrist. She communicates with dad who’s on the other side of the campground. I’m sure he had no idea where she was.

Now, we had this delightful interaction, right? Very harmless. She seemed like she was having the time of her life, but I thought to myself, I’m not sure I would have been comfortable with that much freedom as a parent. So, my fears would have been happy if my kid just stayed with me at the campfire. And they wouldn’t have had that fun piece there, Craig.

Item number three, having fun. She was having a good time. Right, yeah. And I think that’s so insightful, Matt, that a lot of times our kids get cues from us. Now, we can’t take full credit for any of that, but what we’re comfortable with and what we give them, whether verbal or non-verbal cues that say, this is okay, goes a long way into speaking into their own hearts what is safe and what isn’t safe and exactly what you’re talking about there. And they pick that up. Our kids pick it up.

So, what can we say about kids growing out of this? Is it something that gets ironed out with maturity, with growth, with experience, or is it something that as parents we should be stepping into?

And I would say whether you’re talking about temperament and being introverted or anxiety, it’s unlikely that either of those will change with time itself. Now, another thing to think about there is that introverted piece is fine. That’s not something we would necessarily want to change.

Right. Whereas the anxiety piece would be something that we’d want to try to work at and move forward and without purposeful actions and steps with that, it’s unlikely that it’ll just dissipate on its own. And that’s really a great opportunity for us to be aware of that. And then also to be able to say, how can we proactively respond to that for our kids on behalf of our kids?

Maybe paint the vision. So, what does social health look like? And I think that would probably give us parents maybe the vision to say, okay, this is where I want to get my child to be. Does that make sense? Yeah. Another piece that comes to mind there would just be their level of being able to explore the world.

I think that would certainly be a measure that we’d want to consider that if they’re able to explore the world and be curious and learn, that’s a good thing, whether that’s relational or just outside or in a book, like if they’re exploring and just seeking to understand.

So, her name was Lily, and she was exploring. Lily sounds like she was in a good place. She was exploring the world. That’s for sure. Yeah. Now, again, the person who’s a little bit more cautious, maybe you in this scenario is saying, wait, there’s danger out there. Right. And that’s a very real piece of the puzzle too. So, we would be hopeful as they would do some exploring there would also be opportunity for teaching and the reality of danger there. So really, the fears that you experience are good in these bounds and with these parameters and helping our children understand what good healthy concern is and what irrational concern is that’s going to impede those three things, Craig, that you talked about, right?

Yeah. Creating quiet just one on one time with that kid. I know that sometimes that can be very difficult but creating that environment really to be able to connect and communicate with them is giving them that opportunity to explore how they feel and also then for you to speak into them.

Is there some hard exposure that’s helpful? Like, okay, we’re going to do this and it’s going to be hard and you’re going to hate it, but here we go. We’re going to go into a social setting. So, I am wondering if that could be part of the treatment? Yeah. I would say for sure. Particularly if you’re talking about the child who is really anxious, socially anxious, that part of the journey moving forward is being able to identify that and label it as, okay, I think you’re feeling some anxiety around people and here’s some of those fears and here’s the truths that we’d bring into those fears.

And along with that to say, okay, let’s practice. Let’s practice some of these interactions that are fearful. Hey, we’re going to go ahead and go into the Sunday School room and practice this as a way to help the anxiety. So that they know, okay, I’m going into this situation, but I know what to do.

You mentioned going to that room. This is where you’re going to be able to sit and this is what that’s going to look like. Really walking through it. And you look at those three legs of the stool, right? One is awareness. What is the education piece? Helping our child understand what their anxiety looks like, what their thoughts are.

Then the second thing, as Brian mentioned, let’s start looking at some skills. What are we able to do with that? What are some specific things that we can do to help? And then that third part is, now we have to practice. You know, Craig, a tool that I think you put us on years ago was social stories, would you care to say something about social stories and how they work because I found that to be helpful.

Yeah, we all have paper, pencils, and pens, but just to be able to write on paper. It can be a cartoon stick figure. Hey, here is what your classroom looks like, and we draw that picture out and we draw our child and they’re in that picture now. And so, as we draw the different frames in a comic book style if that’s an option or different pages, but we’re drawing the story of what our child’s going to be going into and they get to draw or be a part of, okay, this is how I’m going to react.

What does that picture look like for them? Yeah. And we found from that experience that it was really helpful for our child to see herself in that social situation. Like, it was down on paper, and it was like, oh, there I am. I’m in it. And so, it was almost fulfilling the prophecy of the story was the objective.

You’re taking them through an exposure element. But instead of actually taking their hand and walking them into the store, you’re taking their brain, their mind, and you’re walking them into the store on a picture. And you’re taking them there and at a step that’s maybe not going to be as intrusive as heading in there into the fire.

Okay. So, I have another question. How hard should we be on our children? I have a hard time knowing when I put my foot down and when I let them off the hook. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe there’s no easy answer. I think that is such a great question. Yeah, a great question such a hard thing to consider that the picture I would give parents or just people in the place of teaching or leadership is that when we’re talking about asking a child or anybody for that manner to face something that’s really anxiety provoking, it’s essentially like we’re asking them to do something with a grizzly bear roaring in their ear. That’s what we’re asking and if that visual can give us a little bit of empathy, like they’re not trying to be stubborn if we’re talking about disobedient.

Yeah, they’re not trying to be. Yes, it looks worse than that. It looks like they’re scared. When your eight-year-old looks at you and says no. That sounds pretty much like insubordination. Yeah, we’re going to war here. But what you’re saying is that they are behaving out of fear and that needs to be separated from just pure rebellion.

Right. And I think from that context, then you figure out where you start pushing and you need to push at something that’s as low of a level of anxiety that you can and then work your way up to the big anxiety. Like Brian said, we practice that, and we help them get better in that and so it’s not something where anxiety has to manage them, but that they learned that they can manage their anxiety. I don’t feel like doing this, but I can still do this. I can manage that. And that’s a good thing and being able to build that success in them.

So, here’s what I’m hearing you say, Craig, while I might concede right now on this particular one, we’re going to schedule out victory in this area, right? What does that look like to win it over time? Maybe that’s it. Win it over time. Yeah. And I think too, to see it. Then as you and your child are on a team together working against something and you’re looking for progress, slow and steady using your picture, Brian, instead of telling them that that grizzly bear does not exist and they can see it, feel it, they could just hear it behind.

Instead of saying it doesn’t exist we get to come alongside them and say, you know what, I’m going to help you. We’re going to find a way to help you. To make this big grizzly bear down into a little puppy or a little kitty, you know, we’re going to work on this. How about this social anxiety where maybe they’re okay if mom and dad are present, but not okay when mom and dad are not present in a social situation.

There are times where you just can’t be present with your child, whether it be in school or otherwise. Yeah, exactly. So, tricks for that or ways to think through that, I would just say it’s kind of similar to other things as well. Just trying to figure out what is the next step towards them being able to move towards feeling safe. As mom and dad step out more and more.

So, for example, if they’re okay if mom and dad are in the room, but if they leave, it’s problematic, well, maybe this time we practice, you stay in the living room, mom and dad are going to go in the dining room. Let’s do that for 15 minutes and slowly work towards getting more and more space and longer time periods in between.

A lot of the motion that we make in social anxiety is not done in the critical moments when it’s all put to the test. It’s done before that, in between those episodes. Is that what I’m hearing? That’s exactly right. I know one trick, Craig, that I learned from you as well in this particular situation of absence from your child is to give them the car keys, explain to them, now listen, mom and dad, we’re stuck here too.

You got the car keys. We’re going to be back, right? And just to have the tight cab, the car keys in the pockets, you might want to pull off some important keys, maybe the most important, you know, whatever, but it was helpful in this particular situation to say, okay. And I think just another piece that we’ve certainly talked about that’s important to remember is a big part that keeps anxiety going is avoidance.

So, if you’re fearful of something and you avoid it, basically, you’re going to feel better because you avoided it, but then that reinforces avoiding it in the future. But if you’re going to have less anxiety in the future, that means you’ve got to engage it and through that, learn that it’s not as dangerous as what your brain is telling you.

And so, once you get on that loop, then you can start moving forward and you get some victories and you’re going to have some freedom versus the avoidance loop that reinforces itself and leads to more avoidance. And Brian, this can be a scary exercise for not just the child, but for the parents too. Oh, my.

To say, I can’t imagine this upcoming event, whatever it is. I cannot even imagine it, but we’re going to press into it. They’re frightened. We’re frightened. I mean, if truth be told, I’d just rather stay home and enjoy a quiet evening. Yeah. And I think to all of this talk, to go back to a point that we started, is just important to remember that some kids are not going to be particularly social just because that’s more their temperament. They just are fine being alone. And I think in those situations, we want to push them towards some interaction to some level as well. But it’s a different thing that’s holding them back and that’s okay.

That’s God’s creation. And it’s okay if your child prefers to just spend time alone and read, we still want to try to push them into interacting with others and social interaction, but it’s not necessarily being driven by anxiety. Just the thought Matt as well that timing is significant. And to recognize that when our child has their brain level trigger already switched into this is an alarm and they’re in the fight flight response and the brain has released all the adrenaline and they are like throwing a fit or meltdown or just going completely crazy so to be aware that when they’re in that moment, that’s probably not when they’re going to be most responsive to our great teaching points.

So, we want to be aware to say, okay, how do I do that? Prepare? How am I able to come back later after an event and say, hey, let’s talk through this for a second. Or this is what dad saw. This is what mom saw. And to be helping them with the eyes and ears to how they responded to something.

That we parents then really have to die to ourselves. Because if the truth be told, when those situations are amped up, we’ve got a lot of saving face to do, right? Yeah. Which makes things worse. Yeah. And that’s a tough piece, right? Where you just have to say, you know what? We’re all projects here.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Done there. Whatever. That’s so interesting, Brian, because we talked earlier about, sometimes kids struggle with that social anxiety, and it’s about being embarrassed and humiliated in public, and we as parents find ourselves in that exact same scenario, don’t we? Right, it’s exactly right.

Yep, that’s very true. I think what we’ve been talking about here is general in the sense that this is a common experience. I’m guessing there are probably some social anxiety disabilities. I don’t know if there’s anything to fill out in this space now as it concerns children. I think it’s wise to consider, Matt, that just like if we have a child at home and their cough is going into the third day, what do we do? We ask some questions, or we call the doctor. We would say, this isn’t normal. Yeah, or I’ve done what I know to do for a regular cough, and it’s always cleared up in the past, but for some reason now it’s not.

So, we take the next step. And some of the research out there looks at anxiety moving from the normal that we deal with to the disorder level. In other words, that’s another level of paying attention. We look at four D’s here to describe that. One is disproportionate. Wow. It’s just so much more than all the others. Is it disruptive? It just really takes away from all the other activities that are going on. The distress and the duration are longer and more intense than just normal scenarios.

Exactly, if it’s disrupting day to day life, whether it’s school or the family unit. Mom and dad want to go on a date night or you’re going to go on vacation that’s going to cause some social interaction and it’s just disruptive to those kinds of activities.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And then the next two Ds help us really be able to get a picture of the disruption piece. So, in other words, the third D, which is distress how impacted our child is right now in their distress level. If we would say from a scale of one to 10, are they hitting the eight, nine, 10 levels all the time with their distress?

And then the last one is the duration. How long has this been going on? Is it a two-minute thing or is it 30, 40 minutes every single time. So, that’s another angle to help us say, okay, maybe there’s something more here that’s going on. And then what would we do with something more? Then maybe at that point, talk to the school and leadership there, and maybe they can help you sort through it and then move on up the ranks through other support, other parents, ACCFS and putting it all together.

But there are other supports in place. Yeah. Absolutely. Sometimes reaching out to the pediatrician and giving them what you’ve been going through. Sometimes there might be a health issue that’s going on behind the scenes that is impacting this anxiety spike or the struggles we’re seeing.

Do you have any resources? I love the Maureen Wagner Worry No More workbook is a great resource. I know we have some things on our website that look at anxiety as well. I know some of these resources you mentioned provide a bit of vocabulary, even for your child to process their experience. And I think that’s an important hump to get over.

Yeah. When they can start to place their finger on what it is that they are feeling. So, for example, Craig, I remember you helping us too with, how fearful is this? Is this a small bucket fear, a medium sized bucket fear, big bucket fear? And what should we be big bucket afraid of? Now as we engage, we can talk just a bit about how big that grizzly bear is and help them see that. Oh, you think this is a big grizzly bear.

This actually isn’t a big one, but this is what it is. Yeah. Helps them process their reality. Yeah. And they won’t naturally have those containers of how to look at things either in size or perspective or language. Yeah. And that’s really something that we get to help. Brian and Craig, thanks a lot for the help that this provides to our listeners and to me, as we parent our children.

This is certainly an area that concerns many. To our listeners, thanks for being here. Thanks for being along. We trust and pray this has been helpful. We do have resources on our website, accounseling.org, regarding anxiety and worry. You’ll find helpful tips there. And feel free as always to communicate with us at [email protected].

Thanks for being here.