Anxiety up to a certain level is alright but if anxiety is consistent and keeps on increasing and spreading across areas of life, its time to consult a doctor for the same. Your child could be suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

It is known that between 5% and 10% of the people suffer from anxiety disorders and its more common with kids having ADHD.

Symptoms

Kids with generalized anxiety disorders experience too much of fear or worries often to an immense extent. As a result they are not able to concentrate, are restless, fatigued and suffer from frequent urination, stomach aches as well as sleep difficulties.

The stress and tension are of chronic nature and do interfere and affect various areas as well as the quality of their life.

At times even the child might be able to understand the excessive anxiety issues, but might not be able to control or manage it.

Diagnosis

One of the criteria around the diagnosis of GAD is, the experience needs to last for around six months at least. A trained mental health practitioner will assess the child and work with the child around his/ her anxiety disorders.

Well, apparently GAD is more likely to affect children who have undergone challenging situations in life or have been maltreated are at a higher risk of GAD. Challenges like humiliation, cruelty, and abandonment are a few triggers that already affect adults, then children would obviously be, isn’t it? Even puberty could bring in stressors besides consistent difficulties in relationships socially as well as frustrations and school performance issues as well. Treatment plans are based on diagnosis and differ from individual to individual.

*Sourced from the Internet

So, here are some strategies to help you manage the routines of your ADHD child in such a way that the child is engaged and not bored.

Summer Camp – Putting your child in a summer camp is a really good way to keep the child engaged. At the camp, the child will be kept engaged with different types of activities be it art, craft, dance and more.  A good camp will help your child’s skills to be honed as well.

Family time – As much it is important to for the child to have play time in structure form to an extent, it is equally important for the child to spend time with both the parents together. This will not only give the child a sense of security and happiness, it will also enhance family bonding.

Unstructured Time – Though you may have activities planned for the kid throughout the day, it’s always advisable to give your child some me time or unstructured time.  This will help your child explore self, his or her creative abilities and be natural. At this time allowing the child to do whatever he or she wants is a good idea.

Dedicated Activity – If your kid is well above 4-5 years of age you might as well enroll him or her in some dedicated sport of extracurricular activity. Observe the child for some days as in if the child is really enjoying the sport or not and based on that decide on continuing the activity. ADHD kids are known to pay a lot of attention to what they love to do. So, this might just help your kids explore his or her very own potential and area of interest.

Well managing the routine of kids, in general, is a time consuming and extremely responsible activity that requires you to be on your toes all the time because of the safety of the child. But, planning out the vacation and distribution the day over meaningful activities and quality time spending can help a lot in releasing the pressure of your head and allowing your child to take optimum advantage of the holiday season.