How to know if your child is stressed – and what to do

Parents want their children to be happy – but more than ever before, this seems like a tall order. In a 2022 study, two in five parents reported that their children frequently experience anxiety, up from less than a third in 2020.

For that we have world events to blame, says Dr Martin Forster, the lead psychologist at digital healthcare company Livi and an expert in childhood mental health. “These figures reflect the fact that the world just does not feel as safe as it did 10 years ago,” Forster says. “Even children as young as three or four are emotionally affected by things like pandemics and wars breaking out because they are highly sensitive and easily pick up on their parents’ feelings.”

Older children are also experiencing stress and anxiety in larger numbers than ever before. “Eleven and twelve-year-olds who are starting their high-school years seem to be more and more distressed these days,” says Dr Peter Slater, a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at London’s Harley Therapy clinic. 

“This hasn’t been helped by Covid lockdowns as socialisation is so crucial to wellbeing, but there is also the stress of comparison with their peers that’s so difficult in the age of social media. Children can develop very high expectations of themselves and worry about whether they will manage in the adult world.”

Forster and Slater say that children as young as four can experience stress and anxiety. With the right help and support, however, children don’t have to carry these feelings into adulthood or let them spoil what should be their happy, carefree years. So how can you tell when your child is struggling – and what can you do to help them cope?

Understanding stress and anxiety

While as adults we may use the terms “stress” and “anxiety” interchangeably, it’s crucial to make a distinction between the two when talking about children, says Forster. 

“Stress is a normal and healthy response to a child’s environment,” he says. “It happens when the demands on a child are too high – because their schedules are packed unnecessarily or there are difficult things happening in their environment.

“Anxiety on the other hand is more of an exaggerated response, where the child is afraid of or worried about something that in reality doesn’t pose any threat.” Frustratingly for parents, anxiety may often be tied to scenarios that their child could previously handle with ease, like school trips away from home or visits to the dentist. Often this may be the manifestation of a completely different problem, like being picked on in the playground or overhearing an argument at home. This is one factor that separates anxiety from stress, which results from a particular problem or event. 

Understanding the difference between these two terms is crucial to addressing the problem, Forster says. “If your child is stressed, it’s your job to help change what’s happening around them, or help them deal with it practically. If your child is anxious, it’s your job to help them handle those feelings and face what is scaring them,” he says. The best way to do that is by validating their feelings and showing that you understand and want to help – of which more later. 

What are the symptoms of stress and anxiety?

Both stress and anxiety present very differently in children depending on their ages. “Generally speaking, children aged three to four can’t explain to you what’s going on for them emotionally,” says Slater. “Children of that age might seem to regress a bit, however, if they’re stressed or anxious – they might be more clingy or tearful.”

Even if your child is too young to talk about their emotions in any detail, they may tell you about the physical symptoms of stress they’re experiencing. One recent study found that children aged between seven and 12 commonly experience headaches, stomach aches, sweating and high heart rates when under stress. 

Children of all ages also become more withdrawn when they’re experiencing either stress or anxiety, Slater says. “Younger children might stop doing things they’d usually enjoy, like arts and crafts or football,” he explains.

“Older children, on the other hand, might start spending more time by themselves, or withhold their feelings from grown-ups to avoid bothering them – that’s something I see a lot in Year 11s who are sitting exams, on top of seeming burned out and not wanting to go to school.”

When does stress or anxiety really become a problem? 

“While stress is a healthy response to an over-demanding environment, what may not be healthy is if your child can’t return to their normal, happy self,” says Slater. 

Slater sees children who are suffering from extreme stress and anxiety as well as specific anxiety disorders, such as generalised anxiety disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder. It is important to know when your skills as a parent aren’t a match for your child’s mental health needs, he says. 

“As professionals we assess the period in which the child is struggling to see if the response they are having is perhaps disrupting their lives in such a way that it’s difficult for them to function, such as impacting their sleep, appetite or social skills,” explains Slater. “Often the way we assess that is through play, since young children don’t have the words to communicate what’s upsetting them. That’s really something for trained experts to do.” 

Anxiety in early childhood can be one symptom of an illness that may develop in adolescence. “Some disorders can be diagnosed in very young children, and the symptoms of an anxiety disorder like obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) might appear in children as young as three or four,” says Forster.

“Things such as generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder are more likely to appear in later childhood, however, as they tend to have a large cognitive component that younger children mostly will not have developed yet.

“Depression tends to show up similarly – young children might experience low mood, but depression is characterised by negative thoughts about ourselves and the world, which younger children are typically not able to form,” he adds.

How to help your child manage their stress or anxiety

Almost every child will experience stress at some point, and while it’s crucial to seek professional help if you believe your son or daughter might have an illness, there is much to be done to prevent a clinical issue from forming. 

Where the problem seems to be stress, it is the circumstances that must change and not your child, says Forster. Children now “have much less free time than they did 20 or 30 years ago”, he says. One study conducted in the North West of England and published in 2018 found that 88 per cent of children take part in an organised extracurricular activity on four or five days a week, with 58 per cent taking part in more than one in a single evening.

“Parents want the best for their children and think that setting them up with sports classes or piano lessons means they’ll have the best outcomes possible in adult life,” Forster says, “but it is easy to underestimate the importance of downtime and relaxing together as a family.”

Parents often have little power to take away some of the biggest stressors a child could encounter, such as financial worries, a house move or a divorce. In those cases, it is important that parents reassure their child that the situation is being handled by a capable adult.

“Often stress is tied to predictability, or a lack of it,” Forster explains. “The best thing you can do as a parent is to say, we know this is hard, but this is what’s going to happen next, and this is why it’s all going to be okay.”

Anxiety can be more complicated. “Around 50 per cent of the anxiety you might see in a child has a genetic cause, in my estimation,” says Dr Forster – so if you experience anxiety yourself, it’s well worth looking out for warning signs in your child. “That doesn’t mean your child has to feel anxious forever though. Help them to see that whatever is causing the anxious feeling can be overcome, or that changes can be made so that it’s less frightening,” Forster advises. A sleepover can become much less anxiety-provoking if your child knows what time you will pick them up in the morning, and that you can come in the night if needed, for example. 

Most important of all, however, is to validate your child’s feelings, according to Slater. “If you can see that a younger child has become clingy, let them know that you can see they’re feeling a bit scared or worried. This can be reassuring enough to stop the problem,” he says.

“The important thing is that your child can put their trust in you, right from early childhood into their teenage years,” he adds. “Older children can clam up, and attempts to get through to them can backfire. Regardless, it’s crucial to show that you’re there, and willing to help should they need it.”