School Phobia, Panic Attacks and Anxiety in Children [Paperback]

'Bringing together knowledge from her years of teaching and parenting, Marianna Csoti shows how parents and professionals can help children aged five to sixteen move away from the negative thoughts and behaviour that contribute to school phobia...This positive and practical book is packed with information and guidance for parents, carers, teachers and other child-support professionals, on dealing effectively with the difficulties of children whose lives are being adversely affected by school phobia and related anxieties. Photocopiable pages are provided for parents and professionals to give to the child's teacher to aid understanding of this distressing and very real condition.' Don't Panic 'As the incidence of school phobia increases, this book provides a helpful exploration of issues causing anxiety in schoolchildren...An excellent source of guidance on dealing with school phobic children, this book will be useful to parents, carers, teachers and other professionals working with children.' -childRIGHT

Many children are challenged by anxiety at some time in their school career. Bringing together knowledge from her years of teaching and parenting, Marianna Csoti shows how parents and professionals can help children aged five to sixteen move away from the negative thoughts and behaviour that contribute to school phobia. As well as tackling specific problems of bullying, separation anxiety, social phobia and panic attacks, the author provides information on current therapies and medication for the severely affected and on what to do if the child regresses. The advice can also be used to help guard against another sibling developing school phobia. This positive and practical book is packed with information and guidance for parents, carers, teachers and other child-support professionals, on dealing effectively with the difficulties of children whose lives are being adversely affected by this distressing and very real condition.

School phobic children who have frequent absences from school are not truants because children that truant experience no anxiety about attending school and, when they ‘bunk’, don’t tend to stay at home, but are out all day. School phobic children, when not in school, are relieved to be in the safety of their home with their main carers.

School phobic children can suffer anxiety symptoms including:

· crying
· diarrhoea
· feeling faint
· a frequent need to urinate
· headaches
· hyperventilation
· insomnia
· nausea and vomiting
· a rapid heart beat
· stomach aches
· shaking
· sweating.
Spending many hours each day feeling anxious, and not getting sufficient refreshing sleep, can take its toll on the school phobic child. She will probably feel very tired all the time. She may also feel low or depressed because of feeling so horrible. It can therefore not be stressed enough that she needs to be handled with great care and gentleness: it may have a great bearing on her future.

A child suffering from school phobia is not attention seeking, or spoilt or encouraged to stay at home by her main carers. A child that has school phobia cannot ‘snap out of it’ or ‘pull herself together’. No previously cooperative and well behaved child would willingly deny herself the pleasure of becoming fully involved in the school environment and friends. The child does not gain from being school phobic but loses.

There can be many triggers of separation anxiety such as starting school for the first time, being absent for a long time from ill health or a holiday, having a new baby in the family that makes the child feel threatened, suffering bereavement or having troubles at home or being bullied. For some, there may be no obvious cause.

Older children, from age 8 upward and particularly adolescents, can suffer from social phobia but may also have separation anxiety. Social phobia is a fear of being judged and evaluated by others and children that suffer from it may seem aloof; awkward; backward; disinterested; inhibited; nervous; quiet; shy; unfriendly and withdrawn. Despite wanting to make friends and become involved they are hampered by their anxiety. In school they will fear being the centre of attention; having to answer or read aloud in class; being involved in assemblies, performances, games lessons and sports day; being picked last for teams, and for others laughing at their mistakes or ineptitude.

The best way for teachers to deal with a child suffering from anxiety is to deal with her very sensitively (she is very vulnerable at this time) and show her that they care about her and are on her side.

It is often hard to understand why a child is so scared when teachers see the school environment as a safe, friendly place. So to empathise with the child, teachers should try to imagine their greatest fears and how they would feel if they had to face them day after day: with many people being unhelpful because they do not understand. It may make them feel powerless; out of control; angry; hurt; terribly stressed and vulnerable.

The child probably lives those fears every minute, even when she gets home as she knows there will be school the following day or the following Monday. Her dreams will be taken up with her fears. She may have trouble getting to sleep, be frightened of the dark and relive her greatest nightmare again the moment she wakes up.

Unless her teachers have been so frightened or stressed that they have vomited, had diarrhoea and felt a constant urge to urinate, they may not be able to appreciate what the child has to face in coming to school. She needs comfort, reassurance and some sort of acknowledgement for the desperate struggle within her, for being so brave just for turning up to school, let alone staying there all day.

If the child’s teachers can make the child’s time in class non-threatening, rewarding and reassuring, the child may relax enough to take in some of the lesson. Schools that are highly evaluative and authoritarian can provide increased stress for the child and make her feel more helpless than ever and demoralised. It is well known that children under stress cannot learn effectively.

This book will help parents and professionals help a child distressed in this way. It is packed with tried practical advice. It also gives details of relaxation cassettes for children, available from the author herself.

Many children at some time in their school career are challenged by anxiety. School phobia, a complex and extreme form of anxiety about going to school, can have many causes and can include related anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia and selective mutism. Children with Asperger Syndrome are particularly prone to school phobia and sometimes need to be treated differently to anxious children without the condition.

Bringing together knowledge from her years of teaching and parenting, Márianna Csóti shows how parents and professionals can help children aged five to sixteen move away from the negative thoughts and behaviour that contribute to school phobia. Particular emphasis has been given to bullying, separation anxiety, social phobia and panic attacks.

Information on current therapies and medication is included for the severely affected and on what to do if the child regresses: once a child has shown a tendency to the type of anxieties mentioned in the book, there is greater risk of recurrence later in the child’s life. The advice can also be used to help guard against another sibling becoming affected with school phobia.
This positive and practical book is packed with information and guidance for parents, carers, teachers and other child-support professionals, on dealing effectively with the difficulties of children whose lives are being adversely affected by school phobia and related anxieties. Photocopiable pages are provided for parents and professionals to give to the child’s teacher to aid understanding of this distressing and very real condition.

Marianna Csoti has taught in the London Borough of Brent and has been a houseparent at an international sixth form college for six years. She began writing personal, social and health education when she moved to Wales. She is the author of People Skills for Young Adults, Social Awareness Skills for Children, Contentious Issues, also published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers and Assertiveness for Young Adults and The People Skills Bible. Her website is: www bookstohelppeople.co.uk

Introduction
No official statistics are available for children suffering from school phobia in the UK. However, according to Anxiety Care (see Useful Contacts), the number of children who dislike school and avoid it whenever possible, is probably more than 5 per cent of the school age population, but less than 1 per cent could be genuinely called school phobic. The Royal College of Psychiatrists suggest that between 5 and 10 per cent of children and young people have anxiety problems bad enough to affect their ability to live a normal life.

This book gives information and advice to parents and carers of, and professionals working with, children aged 5 to 16 that suffer from anxiety disorders, especially separation anxiety and social phobia that are part of school phobia (see Chapter Two). Chapter One includes photocopiable pages for professionals, and parents and carers, to give to teachers to help them understand the anxieties some children have about school.

Occasionally, a child that has suffered from school phobia in primary school has it recur in secondary school, often in a different form. This book helps helps parents, carers and professionals help children of any age recover from school phobia, guard against recurrence, and guard against it starting with a younger sibling, and has many practical tips.

My interest in writing this book is largely personal. My own daughter suffered severely from school phobia, starting just before her sixth birthday and coming though about nine months later. She suffered most of the symptoms mentioned in the book and became a sickly child from lack of food and constant stress. Her ability to function outside the confines of her home became extremely limited and her fears affected her whole life, which affected ours. During the extremes of her suffering, she attended school only part time on health grounds.

I found out that most of the people I turned to for help did not know how to give it. Some were unwilling to even try. As one who likes to problem-solve, I worked hard at finding my own solutions and had these confirmed by the child and adolescent psychiatrist to whom my daughter was referred after persistent requests. The practical advice given in the book has come from my own experiences with my daughter.

It was only when I heard of other children suffering from school phobia that I realised it was a more common problem than I’d thought and I wanted to share what I had learnt with others to limit the damage to all involved, but most particularly to the children vulnerable in their distress.

The reasons for school phobia to play a part in any child’s life are varied but the theme that is common to all is stress that the child is unable to handle. The quickest way through is to remove the stress, allowing the child to relearn that the things he or she now perceives as dangerous are completely safe. If this is not possible, the child must be helped to deal with the stress and understand why he or she has such fears and learn to keep them under control.