Archive | December, 2015

Performance Anxiety

29 Dec

Your aspiring athlete or musician has become increasingly anxious before some competition or performance. If you have an anxious child, this is not necessarily a surprising turn of events. It is the anxious brain at work, always ready to imagine the worst case scenario. And yet, the activities your child is involved in can be so important in developing a sense of competence, learning healthy habits, developing self-discipline, and making friends. So what is the thing to do when your child develops performance anxiety? There are four considerations.

First, there is a question of whether adults have been creating the problem. Parents can be guilty of living vicariously through their children and placing way too much interest in the outcome of an event. Children want to please their parents, so they are especially vulnerable to this pressure. Coaches all too frequently operate under the mistaken belief that being critical and tough fosters competitive excellence. A good coach certainly brings out the best in his or her team, but the prerequisite is creating a climate in which it is safe to make mistakes.  Only when children feel safe to make mistakes can they get the feedback that will enable them to improve and reach their potential.  Unfortunately, many coaches believe that belittling the athlete will motivate him or her, when in fact it only leads to discouragement and anxiety.

Second, for any number of reasons, your child may be overly focused on winning. This is understandable, but counter-productive. In part, one of the benefits in pursuing a sport or musical skill is that it teaches the child focus and concentration skills. Along the way, your child has to learn to tolerate the tension that is inherent in most performance situations. Breathing and visualization skills can be very helpful to children in learning to focus on the here and now of doing their sport, rather than getting ahead of themselves and thinking about winning.

Third, if the performance problem is chronic in nature, consider the possibility that it is the product of an injury, such as falling off a balance beam, or an adverse event such as being criticized by a coach in front of the entire team. A child may have recovered from the physical part of the injury, but psychologically he may still be affected. Trauma occurs when you can’t protect yourself–you fall off the balance beam and you can’t stop your fall, or the coach is berating you and you don’t feel you can say anything. While your child may be able to put this problem into words, she is basically not feeling safe in her performance-related activity. When the more psychological aspects of this injury or trauma is addressed, the problem can be resolved.

Finally, it may be that what appears to be performance anxiety may actually be the manifestation of another problem. A child with separation anxiety might be afraid to participate in a sport because it involves being away from a parent. OCD can also interfere with a performance when obsessions get attached to some aspect of the activity, e.g., “I can’t play golf because my clubs are dirty.” The problem, again, is not the performance, but rather another form of anxiety that gets attached to the activity. Part of the solution in both of these situations is helping the child view these activities as so important and valuable that it is worthwhile to struggle through the discomfort. Having compelling goal is very important in dealing with all forms of anxiety.

The skills learned in dealing with the performance anxiety your child has about participating in a swim meet or a chorus production can be invaluable lessons which will help in all aspects of life.

(For more information on Performance issues see my interview with Dr. Alan Goldberg on my iTunes podcast “Your Anxious Child: 5 minute solutions”)

copyright@Edward H. Plimpton, PhD

Oh she will be fine

20 Dec

“Oh She will be fine”  Edward H. Plimpton, PhD

 

Recently, you expressed a concern about your anxious child to a friend, or perhaps a pediatrician or teacher, and were told “Oh, she will be fine, it is probably just a phase”. Perhaps. A lot of parenting involves learning what to fuss over and what to let go.  Mark Twain once said “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened”.  A wise statement, implicit in the well-intentioned reassurances from friends and professionals. It is invaluable to draw upon the experience of others who know how certain behaviors and feelings can change and unfold over time. It is not unusual for a child to tearfully and bitterly protest about being dropped off at daycare or school, and then to have the teacher report that she was fully and happily engaged ten minutes later. Experience can teach us not to be too reactive to the present moment, especially since excessive parental reactions foster anxiety and other problems in children.  And children can be incredibly resilient under difficult circumstances in seeking out what they need to prosper and thrive. So there is a lot of truth to the simple statement that “she will be fine”.

“She will be fine”, however, can also be an empty and misleading reassurance. Many a parent has sensed that something was not quite right, only to be dismissed with “it is just a phase,” with the underlying message that it is simply the concern of a nervous parent. But life is uncertain, there is no crystal ball, and parenting is definitely an exercise in tolerating uncertainty. Sometimes “she will be fine” is the response of someone who doesn’t have the knowledge to say anything else, or who doesn’t want to share the uncertainty and doubt. It is, after all, quite difficult to tolerate being in a state of uncertainty. But there is good reason not to dismiss your concerns about your child, whom you know better than anyone else. It may seem obvious, but the reason you know your child so well is that you have a sense of her behavior over time, and her daily rhythms, and the way that she is unique. Any one snapshot of your child, say in school or in the doctor’s office, is only a partial view. ADHD, for instance, is not properly diagnosed by just observing a child in a doctor’s office, but rather by looking at her in several different settings.  Anxious children are well known to keep a low profile in school and in other settings outside of the home.  They can keep it together in school, only to fall apart when they are safe with a parent. The disparity in terms of how your child is viewed does not mean that either you or the friendly commentator is incorrect–you just have access to different time samples. And having a sense of a child across time puts a parent in a privileged position.  So your knowledge of your child’s behavior over time is an invaluable piece of information which should not be discounted.

When faced with a strong intuition that something is not right, one thing a parent can do is to keep asking questions and  sharing experience. This may help clarify the nature of your concern and help sort out what is just a phase and what is a roadblock to your child’s development. Parenting can be complicated, and there is a lot of sorting out to be done, which is why we talk about our kids so much. As the famous pediatrician Benjamin Spock said many years ago, “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”

copyright@Edward H. Plimpton, PhD