My son is 11 and has anxiety and low self esteem.
On the surface he is doing well at school, and has friends, but he has talked about how he sometimes feels invisible and un-noticed.
He is very sensitive and is easily wound up by any form of teasing.
He is very self-conscious about his height and weight which are absolutely perfectly normal. He is in the top 25th percentile in height...however some of his friends are still a few inches taller and this upsets him especially as somebody has called him 'shorty'!
He's also worried about going to secondary school in September and being the smallest/youngest person there.
He is also overly dependent on/addicted to computer games which we try and restrict to a sensible level. This leads to a lot of stress and conflict which usually results in him and my wife and I getting upset.
He sees our 'controlling' of this situation as being unfair.
Being treated unfairly is a big thing with him. If he doesn't always get control of the remote to watch youtube videos of his computer games then we're being 'unfair' and 'unreasonable'.
He is a bit nerdy/geeky and not really keen on outdoor sporting activities as he claims he's 'no good at them'.
I guess he's going through puberty as well which is probably a big factor ... though he's very reluctant to discuss puberty.
He has started to talk about some of his other feelings and we'd like to try and encourage that as much as possible.
I'm reluctant to take him to see a counseller/therapist just yet as that may reinforce his idea that 'he's not normal' and that there is 'something wrong with him'.
Can anybody recommend a good book or website that we could work through together which would stimulate him to express his thoughts and feelings and enable us to talk about his worries and fears?
Many thanks.