Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more common for children to deal with anxiety. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention21% of children ages 3 to 21 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.
Previous generations were taught that if they experienced anxiety as children, they could mostly just deal with it. Now children are seeking accommodation at school due to anxiety and experts believe this is a bad thing.
Some students who feel anxious have up to 20 different accommodations available at school to help.
This follows a commentary by Ben Lovett and Alex Jordan originally published by the Boston Globe and reshared here: Columbia University Teachers College. Lovett is a professor of psychology and education, and Jordan is a psychologist and lecturer. They said most of these interventions are ‘avoidance-based’, meaning they remove things that cause anxiety in students’ lives.
Andrea Piaquadio | pexel
Lovett and Jordan had strong opinions on this. “But as psychologists who have studied and treated anxiety for decades, we believe that this approach of eliminating everything that makes students anxious is making the problem worse,” they wrote. “Here’s why: Anxiety breeds avoidance.”
They explained that the “gold standard” for treating anxiety is actually exposure therapy, i.e. exposing patients to anything that makes them anxious. Avoidance is the opposite of this, so it just puts a temporary band-aid on the anxiety. It doesn’t really help.
Other education leaders agreed with Lovett and Jordan.
Dr. Justin Baeder describes himself as an “educational philosopher and author” in his TikTok bio. @eduleadership. Baeder made the video as a direct response to comments made by Lovett and Jordan. He found that when an anxious child avoids the things that make them anxious in the first place, it only creates a vicious cycle that leads to more anxiety.
“For example, if you have anxiety about public speaking, public speaking isn’t actually harmful,” he said. “It’s not really dangerous, and you take yourself away from public speaking and embrace that anxiety… It will harm you as a student and reinforce the idea that you can’t do it, that you don’t have what it takes, that the situation is impossible to manage.”
Baeder explained that not forcing children to face scary things is just hindering their education. “What we need to remember for ourselves is that students are capable,” he argued. “Students face challenges, and students need to be challenged to get an education.”
It is possible that some students are confusing anxiety with something less intense.
A fellow TikToker left an interesting comment on Baeder’s video that may explain this behavior. “The word ‘tension’ has been replaced by the word ‘anxiety,’” they said. This is a solid point. True anxiety is a mental health condition that often requires treatment. But in a world where children seem to be a little more cared for than they used to be, it’s easy for them to confuse their nervousness with anxiety.
Counselor Sheryl Ankrom, MS, LCPCI explained the difference between the two. “Nervousness is a natural response to stressful situations. It usually occurs when you are faced with a new or important challenge, such as taking an exam or giving a presentation to a room full of people,” she said. “Anxiety, on the other hand, is a problem you deal with on an ongoing basis. You go through life in a constant state of fear and struggle to calm yourself.”
Even if children don’t confuse nervousness with anxiety, exposure therapy is still the best option when dealing with anxiety. According to cleveland clinic“Research has shown that exposure therapy helps more than 90% of people with specific phobias who commit to treatment and complete treatment.” Avoidance doesn’t truly help anxiety and only makes things worse for these children.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism. Her writing covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
