My sons worries

[cloudedvision]

My son is 9 years old and currently meeting with camhs every 3-4 weeks for the initial 6 sessions (we just had number 4).
He worries a lot. Doesn't sleep til gone 11pm even though hes been in his room since about 7:30/8 pm.
He wrote me a note when he was 6 years old and told me he wished he was dead, wanted to kill himself and thought I would be better off if he was not around.
I took him to the Drs and our GP told me it was my fault, learned behaviour because of my depression which was not fully diagnosed back then.
I have struggled with his emotions, his lack of self esteem, his temper tantrums and his worries ever since and only now are we getting some help.
I am convinced he has generalised anxiety disorder but have been told by his camhs worker not to speculate and wait til they decide.

Does anyone else struggle with a child with anxiety or similar problems?
Any advice on how to cope or methods to help with his worries would be most grateful

[mamalou]

Hi there.
You could be talking about my daughter ! She is 10 and will be 11 in August.

She suffers with terrible anxiety and has extremely low self esteem. We have been under the camhs team for coming up to two years.

A couple of years ago, we decided to take her out of school and home educate as she developed extremely severe separation anxiety and school phobia. I was literally carrying her into the school screaming and begging me not to leave. It got to the point that she spent the entire school day with the counsellor / pastoral worker as she was so distressed.

Thankfully we have found a small school for het to continue her education now. It was tough on our other children swing that she wasn't going to school everyday.

I have been severely depressed for the past three years, and was also severely depressed for the first three years of her life. I totally blame myself for her difficulties.

Sadly, it continues to be a big problem. She is very controlling around food. Anorexic tendencies are a huge concern. When she feels out of control of her worries, she takes control of her food intake.

Thanks for posting. It's a huge responsibility and worry dealing with children and their anxieties.

not sure if this makes sense - I tend to ramble on....

Louise x x

[cloudedvision]

Oh Louise,

You have no idea how good it is to hear someone else has been going through similar difficulties with themselves and their children.

I really struggle to stay strong for him some days when he lashes out at me for no particular reason, blaming me for numerous things and all I want to do Is cry and scream 'I know, I know its my fault and im sorry'
He tends to get more anxious and emotional after his visit with his dad.
I don't want to have to stop his contact with him but I am tending to think maybe his dad is saying things and putting ideas in his head. He only sees him on Saturdays and mostly all week we are on top of things and can control most outbursts but come Saturday evenings and all day Sunday he is such a handful.

He does suffer with low self esteem, wont join in games or anything in groups. If I take him and his younger sister to the park he follows her round making sure she is ok, checking things and telling me im not doing a good enough job because she is enjoying herself  it can be so difficult. He stops himself from having fun because he worries about his sister and strangers being around and the environment around us in case she may get hurt. I keep telling him she is ok, she is 6 and totally different to him, outgoing and loud but he doesn't listen.

He has expressed a few things about his food, saying he is getting fat and stops eating for few days also that he wanted to be a vegetarian because he worried about the animals being killed for us to eat

I have no idea what started this, whether it was the break up with his father or not or just the stress his father gave us all when we first left but whatever it was it is still going on and still very difficult.....planning our lives around his worries is not fun, in fact its exhausting and non of my family and friends understand because they don't have these problems.