Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
New profile posts
Latest activity
Internet Search
Members
Current visitors
New profile posts
Search profile posts
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Forums
Parent Support Forums
General Parenting
Dr. Riley checking in
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Dr. Douglas Riley" data-source="post: 248368" data-attributes="member: 6888"><p>gvcmom and jjj: Anxious kids are among the hardest to get information from on what they are feeling. If you ask a depressed kid what is bugging him, chances are he can give you some info. Ask an anxious kid the same question and you will always get "I don't know." And, they will be telling you the truth.</p><p> </p><p>Anxiety, as a symptom, is a sign that a child does not feel safe. If a child gets anxious to the point of panic prior to going to school, you want to ask if they are being picked on or bullied, if they are being excluded, if they are afraid that they will be called on in class and end up looking dumb, if they are afraid that someone will hurt their mom while they are at school, if they just don't feel right when they are separated from mom, school phobia, and so on. Once you identify the particular worry, which will take some doing, you can begin to design an intervention that will deal with the specific symptom. For example, one child I worked with was so fearful of separating from his mother that he would yell so loud that it would disrupt an entire wing of a school. We ended up doing several things with him. After some digging, it was evident that he was afraid that his mother was going to die while he was at school. We took care of that by having him look at how many days he had been to school so far, and how many times his mother had actually died. I know that this might sound odd to the casual reader, but when he realized that he had been to school hundreds of times and nothing bad had ever happened to his mom, it made him feel better. I also had him practice being away from his mother at home, by going into various rooms with a stopwatch and staying by himself for periods of up to five minutes. He got to trade the minutes in for money and privileges. Over time, he became less fearful.</p><p> </p><p>Anxiety is like this. You have to dig out what the child fears most, and then get inventive. Punishing the child I just told you about for screaming would have done no good, nor would it have worked to try to get him to tell himself not to scream at school if the underlying fear had not been addressed. </p><p> </p><p>Shari: Re how you go about diagnosing the cause of symptoms: symptoms all have a logic to them. The symptoms I talked about above that are anxiety related are often tied to safety fears. In prepubescent children, tweeners, and teens, depression is usually about self-concept issues, external stressors, or biochemical imbalances. ODD always has a power component - these kids are always trying to pull equal with the parents and prove to you that you cannot tell them what to do. Explosive behavior in young children most often has to do with what I refer to in the new book as "roadmaps," or a person's internal vision of what they think is going to happen. If you have a child who blows up and you notice sandpaper rashes on their wrists, dark circles under their eyes, or red ears, there is a good liklihood of a milk sensitivity. To try to answer your question, once you learn what symptoms connect to what underlying cause, often the fix is relatively simple. That is the reason the new book is entitled <em>What Your Explosive Child Is Trying To Tell You</em>. Their symptoms are a message about the underlying cause. </p><p> </p><p>Best regards, Doug Riley</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dr. Douglas Riley, post: 248368, member: 6888"] gvcmom and jjj: Anxious kids are among the hardest to get information from on what they are feeling. If you ask a depressed kid what is bugging him, chances are he can give you some info. Ask an anxious kid the same question and you will always get "I don't know." And, they will be telling you the truth. Anxiety, as a symptom, is a sign that a child does not feel safe. If a child gets anxious to the point of panic prior to going to school, you want to ask if they are being picked on or bullied, if they are being excluded, if they are afraid that they will be called on in class and end up looking dumb, if they are afraid that someone will hurt their mom while they are at school, if they just don't feel right when they are separated from mom, school phobia, and so on. Once you identify the particular worry, which will take some doing, you can begin to design an intervention that will deal with the specific symptom. For example, one child I worked with was so fearful of separating from his mother that he would yell so loud that it would disrupt an entire wing of a school. We ended up doing several things with him. After some digging, it was evident that he was afraid that his mother was going to die while he was at school. We took care of that by having him look at how many days he had been to school so far, and how many times his mother had actually died. I know that this might sound odd to the casual reader, but when he realized that he had been to school hundreds of times and nothing bad had ever happened to his mom, it made him feel better. I also had him practice being away from his mother at home, by going into various rooms with a stopwatch and staying by himself for periods of up to five minutes. He got to trade the minutes in for money and privileges. Over time, he became less fearful. Anxiety is like this. You have to dig out what the child fears most, and then get inventive. Punishing the child I just told you about for screaming would have done no good, nor would it have worked to try to get him to tell himself not to scream at school if the underlying fear had not been addressed. Shari: Re how you go about diagnosing the cause of symptoms: symptoms all have a logic to them. The symptoms I talked about above that are anxiety related are often tied to safety fears. In prepubescent children, tweeners, and teens, depression is usually about self-concept issues, external stressors, or biochemical imbalances. ODD always has a power component - these kids are always trying to pull equal with the parents and prove to you that you cannot tell them what to do. Explosive behavior in young children most often has to do with what I refer to in the new book as "roadmaps," or a person's internal vision of what they think is going to happen. If you have a child who blows up and you notice sandpaper rashes on their wrists, dark circles under their eyes, or red ears, there is a good liklihood of a milk sensitivity. To try to answer your question, once you learn what symptoms connect to what underlying cause, often the fix is relatively simple. That is the reason the new book is entitled [I]What Your Explosive Child Is Trying To Tell You[/I]. Their symptoms are a message about the underlying cause. Best regards, Doug Riley [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Forums
Parent Support Forums
General Parenting
Dr. Riley checking in
Top