I’m hoping to hear from parents whose children have been diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), as we’re feeling quite lost at the moment.
My 12-year-old daughter has recently been diagnosed with GAD following a private assessment. While it’s helpful to finally have an explanation for what she’s experiencing, she’s also feeling incredibly confused. She went into the assessment hoping to understand why she has always found certain things difficult, and now she’s trying to make sense of what this diagnosis means for her and what happens next.
Her anxiety has become so severe that she’s currently unable to attend school. She desperately wants to be there, but when it comes to actually walking through the school gates, her anxiety completely takes over. Watching this has been heartbreaking.
This has all developed over the last six months or so following the transition to secondary school. Before that she was attending school happily, so it’s been incredibly difficult to see such a dramatic change in such a short space of time.
We’re now trying to decide what to do about school, and I genuinely don’t know what the right decision is.
One school we’re considering has a dedicated quiet workspace where pupils can go if they’re feeling overwhelmed. We felt this could be invaluable, as towards the end of term it became clear that she needed somewhere calm to regulate herself and continue learning when the school environment became too much.
However, the only child she knows there is someone she attended primary school with, and they frequently clashed. The friendship has always been very intense with lots of emotional ups and downs. Given how vulnerable she is at the moment, I’m concerned it could create a new source of stress when what she really needs is a calm, predictable environment where she feels safe and secure while she recovers.
The other school offers the opportunity for a completely fresh start and has many positives, but it doesn’t have a dedicated quiet workspace or low-stimulation area where she could work if she became overwhelmed. My worry is that, without somewhere safe to retreat to, we’ll end up back in the same cycle of school avoidance.
I’d really love to hear from anyone whose child has been through something similar. If your child was diagnosed with GAD and struggled to attend school, how did things progress? Did therapy help? If they needed medication, did that make a significant difference? Were they eventually able to return to school, attend happily and enjoy life again?
At the moment it feels overwhelming, and I’d be so grateful to hear from families who have come through the other side and can offer some hope or advice.