Overcoming Anxiety in Teens and Pre-Teens: A Parent's Guide (Dr. T's Living Well Series)

More and more children today suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. It isn’t always easy to see it. It could appear like shyness or “butterflies,” and not seem to be too important to address. We need to know that often anxiety is a healthy emotion, but usually most children or even adults don't know how to deal with it. There is a message that every emotion sends you, but you just have to be patient with the emotion and learn what it is trying to tell you. Children need to learn this skill from adults

Anxiety is defined as a feeling of extreme fear, nervousness, uneasiness or worry of impending doom, or an event of undetermined outcome. However, anxiety is not always a pathological process. The same feeling occurs naturally in association with an intense desire to do something.

Every child or teenager experiences some degree of anxiety as part of their normal social and emotional development. Anxiety only becomes a problem when it is prolonged and starts to interfere with the normal expected daily activities of the child or teenager. "Normal anxiety" responds to comfort and reassurance; this is not true with clinical anxiety.

This book is dedicated to all of those parents who have suffered through temper tantrums, mood swings, shouting matches, pouting, and arguments with their children. You have not failed if your child is depressed or anxious. You have just been given a challenge to create an environment which will help your child conquer this anxiety and grow into healthy adults.

You will be able to walk away from reading this book with the knowledge that either your child needs clinical help (a medical evaluation), or that you just need tips to deal with the behaviors of that age group. You will be able to make an “action plan” for your child, which will make life in your home more manageable and peaceful, and give new tools to your child to deal with life more effectively.