Signs of Anxiety in Kids and Teens That Parents Often Overlook
Signs of Anxiety in Kids and Teens That Parents Often Overlook
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is one of the most common experiences children and teens face, but it may not always present the way we expect. Before we can help, we have to be able to see and notice it.
Anxiety is a normal function of being human. At its core, it is our nervous system’s way of keeping us safe. When our brain senses a potential threat, it activates the fight-flight-freeze response. Our heart rates increase, our muscles tighten, and our attention narrows. It gives our bodies a signal to be alert and act. Fight means confronting the perceived threat, flight means escaping it, and freeze means going still until it passes. Anxiety evolved to prompt action against threats to help us escape danger.
For kids and teens, this system can fire in response to everything from taking a pop quiz to entering a room full of strangers to ordering food at a restaurant. In healthy amounts, this response can keep us alert and motivated in higher risk situations. For example, anxiety can motivate individuals to study for their upcoming final exam. When the alarm signal goes off too often or in situations that are not actually dangerous, it can start to get in the way of our everyday lives.
Anxiety May Not Always Look Like Anxiety
When people picture someone with anxiety, they may imagine someone who is visibly worried, tearful, or reluctant to leave home. While this can be how anxiety presents as, it can also show up in other ways. Below are some of the signs parents may not notice or are misread as something different.
Emotional Outbursts or Irritatability
These behaviors may be mistaken for defiance or oppositional behavior. When a child is overwhelmed with anxiety, they may feel frustrated and emotionally dysregulated.
Concentration Difficulties
A mind focused on worry may have a harder time focusing on anything else, which can look a lot like ADHD. Anxiety and ADHD can also occur together, which can add to the complexity.
Stomachaches and Headaches
Especially common before school, social events, or other anticipated stressors. The physical symptoms are real, even when there’s no medical explanation.
Perfectionistic Tendencies
Erasing and redoing work, refusing to turn in assignments that aren’t “right,” or struggling to start tasks for fear of making mistakes.
Reassurance Seeking
Asking “are you sure?,” “what do you think?” or “but what if” repeatedly. This can provide temporary relief, but can reinforce the anxiety cycle over time.
Sleep Difficulties
Can’t fall asleep without a caregiver nearby, wakes frequently from nightmares, or lies awake with a racing mind long after bedtime.
Avoidance or Refusal
Avoiding places, activities, or situations, including making decisions. “I don’t know” can sometimes mean “I’m afraid to get it wrong.”
Clinging or Timidness
Difficulty separating from caregivers or warming up in new social situations, which can look like going quiet, pulling away, or staying close to familiar people.
Looped or Recurring Worries
Thoughts that circle back repeatedly, such as fears about safety, illness, performance, friendships, or “what if” scenarios that feel impossible to let go of.
Fatigue
Being “on alert” all the time is exhausting. Anxious kids and teens may seem tired in a way that does not match their activity or sleep levels.
Conforming to Others
Going along with what friends think, feel, or do, even when it doesn’t match their own preferences to avoid conflict or disapproval.
Physical Tension or Hyperarousal
Shakiness, shallow breathing, a racing heart, dizziness, or sweatiness, even in low-stakes situations.
Supporting an Anxious Child at Home
You do not have to have all the answers to make a difference. Often, the most powerful thing a parent can do is create an environment where hard feelings are allowed to exist. Here are a few places to start.
Validate Emotions First - before you problem-solve, make sure your child feels heard. There’s a subtle but meaningful difference between saying “that’s scary” (labeling the situation) and “you’re feeling scared” (reflecting their inner experience). The second one helps kids build emotional awareness and shows them their feelings are being heard.
Offer Choices - anxiety can make decision-making difficult. When a child is frozen, offering two manageable options can reduce the overwhelm and put some agency back in their hands. The key is making both choices genuinely acceptable, so whichever they pick, you can fully support it. For example, if your child is scared to go down the slide, you might ask: “Would you like me to catch you at the bottom, or would you like to come down the stairs instead?”
Gently Offer Opportunities for Exposure - avoidance is anxiety’s best friend. When a child consistently sidesteps the things that make them nervous, they never get the chance to learn that they can handle it. Continue to create low-pressure opportunities and celebrate small steps forward.
Model Coping and Doing Hard Things - kids are always watching and are very perceptive to their surroundings. When parents narrate their own coping such as “I’m feeling nervous about this meeting, so I’m going to take a few deep breaths,” it normalizes anxiety and shows that managing it is something you do, not something that happens to you.
Co-Regulation is a Must - young nervous systems can help regulate by borrowing calm from the people around them. Your steady presence, including a calm voice, relaxed body, and lack of visible alarm, communicates that the situation is manageable, even before your child has the internal resources to feel that themselves.
Next Steps
If you’re noticing some of these signs in your child or teen and aren’t sure what to do next, you don’t have to figure it out alone. At Birch Therapy, we work closely with children, teens, and families to understand what’s underneath the surface, make sense of anxiety, and build skills that last.
by Savannah Stocker, MSW Intern