Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Imaginational OE / anxiety

My DD 10 has recently been "losing her appetite" because she seems afraid of eating poisonous plants and other poisoned things. It started with mushrooms. She liked mushrooms quite a bit until she decided that the ones I always buy from the store look like some poisonous mushroom she saw somewhere (it might have been a video game, I'm not even sure if it is a real mushroom). We grow a lot of vegetables ourselves. Ever since my husband started watching videos on edible weeds and identifying all the edible weeds in our yard, DD has been freaked out that she might be eating poisonous plants. We only eat vegetables that we have actually planted, not random weeds. Logic doesn't seem to work for her. We can explain that the mushroom farmers are very careful about keeping out any poisonous mushrooms and that we are eating only plants we have planted ourselves. "How do you know?" is her common refrain. I can only reassure her so much, she is so smart and imaginative that she can come up with any scenario to fuel her anxiety over the issue.

This is one example, there have been other similar issues in the past but they are usually short-lived and we can move past them reasonably enough. Maybe it's just stress. She is still in school but is so ready for summer break. She's on a year-round schedule and has one more week left. She hasn't been getting enough sleep either, it's hard to get to bed on time this time of year. I'm trying to get through the end of school and see if it improves but any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sounds quite a lot like my DD (also 10). We've been dealing with anxiety now for > 1 yr - what you said about being fearful of mushrooms, or other poisonous plants is very familiar. Last year DD had a panic attack because my mother bought her a journal with a beautiful metal filigree on the cover. DD liked it but suddenly worried it had lead in it. No amount of logical reasoning at this point made any difference.

My DD is very anxious around health issues, so lots of things can trigger an anxiety reaction - worries about poison, lack of a specific nutrient in her diet, somebody mentioning a disease... it is very stressful and hard to deal with. And as you've noticed, with kids that are very smart and imaginative they will quickly think of loopholes in your explanations, as well as new things to worry about.

Also, reassurance - it is a natural thing to want to reassure a worried child, but with anxiety if you provide reassurance the child will feel better for a short time, but then come back to you again and again for more reassurance. We've found that we need to really minimize this by providing an answer to a question one time only, then remind her to think of what the answer was.

Another thing to keep in mind - when a person is feeling anxious they are not likely to think logically. It is best to wait until they have calmed down to engage their logical minds. Look into techniques your DD can use to calm herself - meditation, breathing exercises, drawing or coloring (there are lots of very nice 'meditative' coloring books out there now), listening to music, and so on.

If you find the anxiety is not improving or is affecting her life (e.g. my DD sometimes refused to go to school when anxious), you may want to consider therapy.

Also, I found this website to be helpful:

http://www.anxietybc.com/parenting/addressing-excessive-reassurance-seeking

http://www.anxietybc.com/parenting/anxiety-101

http://www.anxietybc.com/parenting/talking-your-child-about-anxiety

Oh my goodness, yes! We have that same issue as well. Thanks for the links, I will check those out. Do you think there is something about this age that makes things more difficult?

I think the lead worry came up after watching the new Cosmos series - which my kids enjoyed a lot, but there was that one episode about lead poisoning - she must have taken it to heart.

I think at this age they are perhaps starting to be more exposed to (and paying attention to) news, current events and so on. Also, DD's school had a 'health' unit about the dangers of drugs and alcohol which went on for weeks and really upset her. I tried to have a glass of wine with dinner one day and that caused a panic attack!

But with DD we started noticing small amounts of anxiety around age 8. It's increased over time - at the beginning we had no idea what was happening or how to deal with it.