Child with extreme anxiety about time

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Does anyone have any suggestions for managing a yr 7 DS with extreme anxiety about time? This manifests itself mostly about being ready for school on time in the mornings, but also: going to parties, meeting friends, making a particular train/bus, going to a restaurant for a booked slot, going to the cinema etc etc.

From a logical perspective, he doesn’t need to worry about time in the morning. He gets up over an hour before he needs to leave the house. All uniform is laid out the night before and bag is packed. All he has to do in the morning is have a quick shower, put clothes on, eat breakfast, do teeth and go. He could actually get up half an hour later and still arrive at school on time. He has never been late for school since starting.

Yet he is SO stressed. If he oversleeps by 10 minutes, he explodes at everyone (“how could you let me sleep! I’ll never make it on time!” etc) and the whole morning is awful. Sometimes he gets so stressed he slows himself down, eg sitting with head in hands panicking, or unable to take clothes off calmly and get in the shower because he’s flapping so much.

It’s worth pointing out this isn’t just about school - on his birthday he spoiled a planned activity that he’d chosen by stressing that we wouldn’t be back in time for lunch in a restaurant (we actually had over an hour to spare).

He doesn’t seem to have a “briskly, but calmly” mode. He’s either thinking he will be late and in a state of extreme stress, or he seems to totally relax - in which case he’s typically sitting lost in a dream/in a book/doing Lego when he should be getting on with something because we need to leave the house in 30 min. He has been known to be sitting with one sock or half a pair of pants on, having got distracted by a book.

I’s be really grateful to hear of any similar experiences and how you approached them. I can’t really tell if this is about TIME per se, and we need to deal with that, or if it’s a symptom of a broader ANXIETY issue, and we need to deal with that instead.

Phew, sorry, that was much longer than I’d intended! Apologies.

I’ve thought of another, slightly odd example: having to leap off a train as soon as it arrives in the station (even at the terminus) in case it should depart with us still on board. This makes the last 10 minutes of a journey really stressful as he is hovering at the door desperate to get off.

It sounds a bit like ocd tendencies. However my step son (year 8) is not dissimilar, but he has asd. He will get up massively early to go to school, and will get annoyed if anyone suggests he could get up later. As a result he is like a walking zombie by the end of the day.

Maybe ask him one morning to do everything as quickly as he can, and time him, so he can measure how much slack he has in his routine? I think maybe he is overestimating how long things take?

I was a generally anxious child and felt similar to how you’re describing your DS. e.g. if we were on a train I’d be worried we’d miss our stop.. even if we were on it for 3 hours. And I didn’t need to worry anyway because my mum was very capable!

I’d be worried about getting to school on time, even though I was never late. Going to events/ parties made me feel stressed - even though I wanted to go.

I’m not sure how to tackle it though. Sorry. Just wanted to give you reassurance that it’s nothing you’ve done wrong as a parent - my upbringing was very secure and loving but I just seemed to be naturally anxious. It improved as I got older.

Thanks, that might be a good idea. We have previously sat down and written out how long each item takes (eg shower 5 min, clothes on 5 min, breakfast 15 min, etc) so that he can see how much slack he has - but it hasn’t helped as he doesn’t believe it works like that in reality. He says the time just “disappears”. I think this might be related to the not having a brisk calm mode thing - when he feels he has a comfortable amount of time, he immediately relaxes and so loses track of time altogether.

OCD is an interesting idea. Wouldn’t that have some other manifestations as well though?

p.s. I am very neurotypical

Thanks DuploTrain - that is enormously reassuring! I hadn’t even really realised until I read your post that I was (of course) worrying it was something we had done “wrong”.

My nephew was like that at the exact same age. In his case it seemed to be linked to a growing awareness of time, but still feeling frustrated with not quite getting how it all fit together and how to tell the time with ease etc. He gradually relaxed over it over the next couple of years as he got more comfortable telling the time and understanding how long things took

How would he cope if you didn’t tell him what time things were booked for - in the birthday restaurant example. Just say- no need to worry DS we have it under control. You would have to explain why you’re doing it. Maybe once he sees that he doesn’t need to be in control he might relax a bit? Are you ever late for things as parents? He might be taking on too much responsibility. Getting himself ready for school, his responsibility, being on time for a booking, parents responsibility.

it could also help him to explore the fear. What is he spiralling to? After the fact when he’s a bit calmer and then remind him next time in the moment.

You: this morning you overslept by ten minutes, you still had lots of time but you were very stressed and said “how could you let me sleep?!” talk to me about what you were worried about
DS: being late
you: what would happen if you were late?
DS: I’d have to sign the late register and walk into my class late!!
you: and then what would happen?
DS: everyone would laugh at me
you: does that happen often to other kids?
DS: well no but…
you: so do you reallly think it would happen?
DS: maybe not but I really don’t want it to happen
you: that’s ok, but it’s very unlikely to happen- it’s never happened to you before has it?

and then next time it happens, get him to take a deep breath and remind him of the conversation. How the consequences are low level and also unlikely.

don’t know if it will help but I definitely have a tendency to spiral and am able to work myself through the spiral options “and then?” And then?” And it really helps me calm down.

Oh these replies are really reassuring - thank you!

CRBear, thanks for the suggestions.

We have tried this:

How would he cope if you didn’t tell him what time things were booked for - in the birthday restaurant example. Just say- no need to worry DS we have it under control. You would have to explain why you’re doing it. Maybe once he sees that he doesn’t need to be in control he might relax a bit?

…and it was a disaster! He obviously felt totally out of control and repeatedly asked us what time it was, how long we had etc. If anything, it made the panic much worse.

We’ve also talked about “catastrophising” and “spiralling”, and that things actually wouldn’t be so bad if he were late, for example. I tried this on his birthday about the restaurant booking - the problem though was that the “worst that could happen” he came up with was much worse than anything I had come up with (“we could run into murderers on the way and they’d kill us” etc)! In fact that started me wondering if it was a more general anxiety issue rather than strictly time-related.

Hi, sorry to hear about your problems. What you describe sounds so like me at that age, and to a lesser degree now. I later in life discovered I have higher functioning autism, and have since realised that deadlines overwhelm me and I them start to shutdown somewhat. I am not saying he is autistic but I wondered if one of my coping strategies would be helpful. I find having a list I can check off quite helpful, but not sure how that would translate with the obvious age difference between me and your child. I guess you could produce something a bit more fun and laminated perhaps, or maybe use stickers instead of ticking something off. Just a thought. GL

You could complete DECIDER Skills Training for parents. It's a mix of CBT and DBT. Great visuals.

I don’t want to do the “could it be ADHD?” thing, but also could it be ADHD, rather than OCD? The drifting off and being unaware of time passing is classic ADHD, and being unable to regulate around time passing is too. He may know he drifts off/loses time/can’t seem to “just get on with it” in the way you’re expecting – getting dressed might take five minutes but not if you spot a book on the bed and that makes you think of the topic of the book and what about this other thing and I just need to Google that and then this. And knowing he has this tendency, but not why or how to handle it, and knowing he’s expected to take five minutes but just can’t, creates the stress aspect.

DP, who has ADHD, has two morning modes, exactly like your DS: drifting off, sock in hand. Or running around freaking out.

Oh, poor kid, sounds like he's really working himself up. I would agree with the anxiety/ocd tendencies, and I think timing him is a great idea.
Have you tried sitting down and talking to him about it when he's completely calm?
When I am anxious about something, sometimes it really helps to think 'what's the worst that could happen'
Like okay, I'm late and I miss my train to work. I can take the next train. But that means I'll miss the start of my meeting. Okay but I can ring my boss to get it pushed back. But they might think I'm an idiot. Why would they think that, I'm otherwise a good employee? Would I think badly of a great employee who was late once? No. Is it life or death? No.

I think what's crucial here is being really careful how you model your reaction to others mistakes. It can be tricky, when you are trying to instill punctuality in, but just be careful in assessing your own reactions. For example, a child who grows up watching his mum wait for dad to come home and is listening to her grumble that he's late, or watch her get more and more agitated waiting, or witnesses a 'you're late, again' tense conversation (even if it's not a fight) might internalise that as being late is a Very Bad Thing.

But definitely try to keep talking to him about it outside of the times where he's stressed. Maybe you can talk to him about how you plan your days out, or include him in the planning process, so you can specifically say ahead of time 'and we will leave here at xx, and the train takes 15 minutes, so we've allowed 30 minutes in case its delayedAnd if the train is late, we can ring xxxx place and tell them and that'll be okay. Or, if they don't have any spaces at a later time, we will go to xxx instead, or even xxxx'
You can be less specific, of course - but it's about deliverately showing him that the world won't end and people won't think less of him if he is late.
So when he is then stressed, you can go 'okay, so the train was delayed - that's fine, cos remember we can call xxx'
This was you are helping him rationalise his way through, and you are helping him move past the 'I'm LATE so I will MISS THIS THING' into a 'IM LATE... so onto the backup plan'
Only you will be able to say if this approach would suit him, but it's helped me enormously.

Apologies, in the time it took to reply I can see you've already responded about the time measuring thing!

It does sound like a broader anxiety issue. My son gets very tearful if he's ever going to be late for anything and he's much older. I think that one of the things to do would be to pick something relatively unimportant but show up a little late and show him that it's not the end of the world. You could ask him to predict/write down what he thinks will happen and then afterwards what actually happened. It's the not knowing and uncertainty that he seems to be struggling with along with whether he will get into trouble. I actually would seek professional support for him. I have suffered from OCD and anxiety all my life. I honestly think that, had it been addressed in my childhood, a lot of it could have been nipped in the bud.

These are really helpful replies, thank you!

Yes I have wondered if I’ve accidentally been communicating stress over deadlines and timings. I do tend to get a bit stressed over lateness so maybe he’s picked up on that? DH is much more laid back about times (and does annoy me with his tardiness - so perhaps this is a factor). Lots to think on here!

I have briefly wondered about ADHD but I would have thought that would show some impacts at school? DS is doing extremely well at school. He definitely doesn’t like being asked to do things at home though, especially if there’s any time component.

I also remember when he was a toddler, he would take (literally) hours to eat a simple meal. In the end we were so frustrated we tried putting a timer on for 45 minutes after which the plate would be removed without a fuss. It was a disaster! He spent the whole 45 minutes so stressed about the timer, that he didn’t eat a thing. We only tried it twice. In the end we just got used to his very slow eating.

I think that one of the things to do would be to pick something relatively unimportant but show up a little late and show him that it's not the end of the world

This is really interesting and I have considered doing exactly that. We have tried to model this (eg when we missed a train - with an “oh well, we’ll get the next one in 20 minutes then, never mind”) but perhaps we need a more structured plan.

I also wondered about professional help. I will think about it.