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Original poster

9 year old son anxiety

5 replies

SarahOffWorld · 21/08/2019 05:43

My son has always had a fear of loud noises like fire works, thunder etc which has led him onto a fear of rain. This past year this fear has escalated to the point where he doesnt want to leave the house if it is even cloudy because there may be a chance of rain. If I try and force him to go out he ends up having a full panic melt down.
He just seems to be scared of everything lately, he had a nightmare 3 nights ago and since then every night if he wakes up he wants me to stay with him in his room and stay awake .He hasn't had the nightmare since and I've tried to talk with him about it but he is so headstrong.
I've bought a couple of workbooks to try and do with him and I've self referred him to CAMHS about his phobias as they are definitely affecting or day to day life.
Anyone else going through this or have any tips on how to make him less anxious and scared.

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
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JiltedJohnsJulie · 21/08/2019 10:14

Sorry, I've not got any experience but I didn't want you to go unanswered. It sounds so stressful for all of you. Hopefully someone will be along soon.

April45 · 21/08/2019 22:07

It sounds like his baseline is to be quite scared of sudden noise which has now been tagged in his brain to try and predict bad weather and thunder.. probably to try and gain some feelings of control over our unpredictable weather. It's a bit more complex than this but I think this as an overview is what's happening.

Did CAMHS accept your referral? An assessment would be helpful to see if there is anything else involved.
Whilst you wait my thinking would be..

  • does he want to feel less anxious about the weather or be able to go out with less concern.
  • if he does may be talk about how you can tackle this together.
  • doing a graded ladder can help to really breakdown into small steps of he has internal motivation to want to work on it. I think to probably focus it on weather to start with. So it might be looking a pictures of different weather including the scary stuff, then once that feels ok after a few goes then increase it a bit to a video maybe with no sound, then involve sound. Not sure if that makes sense.. would that fit at all?
Original poster
SarahOffWorld · 23/08/2019 20:40

Thanks for the info, i think he does want to get rid of the feelings but because he feels safe indoors he's not sure how to feel better.
I have bought a couple of books on weather but i will try the videos of them and see if it makes a difference.
Ive not heard snything from camhs yet but they did say there's quite a long waiting list so we will see. Im also hoping when hes back at school he will be a little better.

OP posts:
April45 · 23/08/2019 21:47

Fingers crossed. Schools sometimes have good suport people available who may be able to help

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