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Is it separation anxiety or the pandemic?

Perspective by
November 18, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EST
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Last spring, as the weather warmed and after-school activities became a thing again, I signed my then 9-year-old son up for a basketball program. It was at a gym he had been to before, but post-covid, the landscape looked different: Parents weren’t allowed inside, so drop off and pick up were at the door. Game days were spent cheering from our cars, as we watched the action unfold via the gym’s live stream.

I explained these new rules to my son, but on our way to his first practice, the questions began: What are you going to do while I’m at practice? Are you sure you’ll be back in time? Can you just wait outside the whole time I’m in the gym? I answered his questions: (run errands nearby, yes, and no) and chalked them up to his being out of practice — literally — with extracurricular activities, but his worries continued.

Then one day last June, construction traffic caused me to be 10 minutes late for school pickup. When I finally arrived, I found my daughter, then 6, consoling her brother, who was furiously wiping tears from his eyes. “He was afraid that he would never see you again,” one of the teacher’s aides told me the next morning, which struck me like a knife in the heart.

But it also prompted me to explore my son’s sudden anxiousness around my whereabouts when I wasn’t with him. Granted, we had been spending much more time together thanks to remote learning, but separation anxiety had never been an issue for him before. Was this pandemic related or the beginning of an anxiety disorder?

“Separation anxiety is more of a feature of who we are than a problem,” says Arthur Lavin, a pediatrician in Cleveland and the chair of the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Our very being depends on being connected to others.”

As kids reach preteen and adolescent years, they go through a balancing act of wanting to remain close to home and venture out on their own, which Lavin likens to a seesaw. “The pandemic was like a boulder on that seesaw,” he says. “When you’re stuck at home for a year, you don’t get to play out these things.”

Which could explain why something that was once a regular part of life — playing on a sports team — suddenly turns into a fear that needs to be overcome. “Kids were around their parents a lot, so they need to practice going out and doing things again,” says Rachel Busman, a clinical psychologist with Cognitive & Behavioral Consultants in White Plains, N.Y. “Kids are really good at the idea that practice makes better.”

This also applies to feelings, like the nervousness that some kids experience when their parent isn’t nearby. While it may seem counterintuitive, constantly reassuring your child that you’ll be there at an appointed time, or repeatedly going over your pickup plan, actually does more harm than good.

“The core feature of all anxiety disorders is difficulty in tolerating uncertainty,” says Jerry Bubrick, a senior psychologist in the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute in New York. “Our job as parents and doctors is not to provide the certainty, it’s to help them tolerate the not knowing. Face it, work through it and feel better about it afterwards.”

For example, Busman recommends going over the pickup plan with your child one time only. When they follow up with a litany of questions, remind them that they already know the answer, while validating that this is hard for them but that they are brave and can handle it. Avoid losing your temper or minimizing your child’s worry too, which is something I am admittedly guilty of.

“Sometimes parents get frustrated, like, ‘Oh, you’re too old for this,’ but imagine how you would feel if someone asked you to do something you were really terrified of,” Busman says. “Parents need to pair validation of their child’s fears with ‘I know you can do this.’ ” (However, if your child’s anxiety is interfering with their ability to live their life or their mood or sleep is being affected, it might be time to seek professional help.)

If your child responds well to incentives, create a rewards chart with tasks such as go over the pick up plan one time, stay calm when my mom or dad leaves, join the activity. If they complete their tasks for the week, they get a prize for their bravery.

Busman also recommends positive reinforcement when you aren’t in the moment, such as if your child plays by themselves in your house for an extended period of time. “Say to your kid, ‘Hey I didn’t hear from you for a couple of hours. Good job hanging out on your own,’” she says.

And going back to Lavin’s point that separation anxiety is inherent in us all, he suggests reminding kids of other times they experienced similar feelings so that they can see how they’ve worked through this before. “Everyone can be triggered when a connection they lean on is denied,” he says. “Try to put their experience in that context.”

I liked these actionable, concrete tips — which also helped me realize how I could be handling my son’s anxiety more productively.

While logically I know that I can’t give my own children absolute reassurance that something terrible won’t happen to me, I struggle with how to redirect them from going to the worst-case scenario anytime I’m not exactly where I say I will be.

Thanks to my conversation with Bubrick, I now know that this is called a “thinking trap,” and a way around it is to teach kids to “challenge their thoughts.”

You do this by coming up with two alternative thoughts to your initial one. So if the immediate reaction when a parent is late is that they’re dead, two other possibilities could be that they’re stuck in traffic or got held up on a work call. “Of those possibilities, which one is most likely? We don’t know for sure, but which one makes the most sense?” Bubrick says. “Help your kids craft different thoughts that are reasonable and fair.”

Now that we’re well into the (in-person) school year, and most of his activities have resumed, I’ve noticed my son’s anxiousness has begun to abate. And I’m trying to find small moments where he can “practice” doing things on his own.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, we were at a street festival with some friends, when one of the boys asked my son to go to the nearby baseball field with him and run around. He looked at me for permission and I told him it was okay to go. “But where will you guys be?” he asked me. “We’ll be right over here,” I replied. “Go ahead. You can do it.”

And he did.

Michelle Hainer is a writer, wife and mother of two in New York’s Hudson Valley. Parenting is one of her best sources of inspiration.

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