Anxiety in 4 Yr Old

Is it just revolving around school? Or do you see it in other areas.

Bullying is a huge problem in schools, and while kids do not know at that age that is what they are doing, if the teacher is not on top of it. it could be happening to her. And therfore making her experince a rough one. When did this start?

FYI just yesterday I witnessed (and stopped) my daughter "bullying" her cousin. My daughter is 2.5 and my neice is 9 months old. My daughter picked up the play castle she was playing with and said that her cousin could not play.. I put my foot down and said that she plays with you or you don't.. She changed her mind and let her play. Of couse this was a mild form, but I want my daughter to play with all. And the words She can not play, are different from I want to be alone..

can you observe the preschool? is it a crazy out of control classroom? are there lots of kids in the class? does the teacher have control of the kids or is it a free for all/

maybe this particular school is not good for your particular child.

but you could just have an anxious child.. see the psychologist. begin therapy.. but make sure you are not in any way encouraging this behavior.. do not give an overabundance of hugs kisses at drop off.. talk about how drop off will go.. one hug one kiss then see you later..

let her talk about being scared tummy hurts but then steer the conversation to other topics.. you can discourage this by telling her she is big and brave and other such things.. my son is anxious and I discouragae anxious behavior.. ... it is helping gradually.

Can you not send her to school? Some kids just aren't ready for school at 4.

I just read your other post about a UTI recurring in this same daughter. I bet she has leaked a bit or had to go a lot one day and someone made fun of her. How about you tell her that when you get to the bottom of the UTI issues there will not be a problem anymore. And tummy aches are part of the UTI by the way, so her tummy MAY hurt.

Now, since I did read the UTI one as well, they have test for kidney reflux, I am surprised they haven't with those test results. My daughter never had UTI's that we knew of, but at age 8 she started having them all the time. Looking back we discovered that she had had symptoms all along but we didn't ever make the connection. When she just happened to have a urine test for a physical and it came back with similar results to your daughters we were now aware of it and it also came to a head really bad. She ended up having severe kidney reflux, and having to have surgery. The doctor said that she lost more then 1/2 of one kidney and a part of her other one. If it hadn't been caught when it was then she could have lost all of her kidneys and been in serious trouble.

It's good that you're getting her in counseling. They can teach her good coping skills and provide you with techniques as well. It's no big deal that she's seeing a psychologist-mine did when she started counseling first.
What really helped when my daughter was four was nightly puppet shows. We would use her stuffies to talk about her day. Her counselor explained that it's great-it's a form of displacement. So, we continued until she seemed to lose interest after school started.
I couldn't get her a spot in preschool, so I paid for abcmouse.com and worked with her as much as I could at home. We also checked out books from the library about anxiety (kids books). All of my efforts were fully rewarded when she started Kidnergarten. She was the only kid that just waived goodbye! I was the first parent out the door!
Good luck-you just have to keep trying things until you find what your daughter responds to best.

A psychologist?....that's a mistake. She isn't mentally insane. That is what those doctors used to be for, mentally insane people. She is having a NORMAL reaction, she's just a child. A baby, really. Sweet, sensitive children have a hard time with the dog eat dog world. I can't blame them. If you take her to him, he is going to put her on drugs. I've seen it happen over and over again. and she end up on them all through her school years. First off she is going to start thinking there is something wrong with her at her root of who she is. Children are uncanny about living up to what they think adults think of them.. Secondly, the drug will mess with the serotonin in the brain, that is what those drugs do. When the child has a reaction from the drug, for example, starts having insomnia (serotonin helps with sleep) , they say the child's anxiety is getting worse and they put them on another SSRI, or up the original dose. before you know it they keep adding drugs to deal with symptoms caused by the drugs, then you have serotonin poisoning called serotonin syndrome. Look it up online. I watched my cousin and my best friends 2 boys both go down hill on this regime, they now have tics, stutter, have insomnia, hypoglycemia, inability to eat and more. For God's sake don't do the psychologist.
Take her out of that class. It is that simple. If you are not working keep her home until real school starts. There is a reason that they started traditional school at 6 years old, it's because the child was ready. I taught 4 children how to read and write and they were not ready at 4, they are ready at 6. They don't have the dexterity. The progressive movement is pushing kids into things way to early. Before you know it, they are going to try to make 1 year olds write letters and numbers. If you absolutely cannot remove her from the class , at minimum I would go sit in a few sessions and find out first hand what goes on in there. By the way, if she is having uti issues it is possible that she has a lack of the stress hormone adrenaline or cortisol. My daughter had UTI's at that age, turns out her hormones were affected (the kidneys can affect the hormones.) you may also see the child zone out at times (hypoglycemia) have knee/hip pain, and eventually have concentration/memory issues at around 9 or 10.

Anxiety is about thoughts. Your daughter is having a lot of fearful thoughts. These thoughts are causing deep fears and they are starting to show up in her body.

Listen to her. Support her by saying: "Tell me about..." Then listen. Do not provide platitudes or solutions. Just listen. Let her spill out her fearful thoughts. This is a good time to just hold her and let her pour out her fear by crying or shaking or whatever she needs to do to fully feel the feeling that is being created by the fearful thoughts. Just hold her and let her feel your support and safety while she feels the feelings. Don't shut down the feelings just because they seem powerful and overwhelming. It is extremely important to allow her to let the feeling pass completely through.

After she has felt the feelings and feels calmer, then ask her: "What will happen next?" Let her use her imagination. If she says: "I don't know," just ask her to imagine what would happen next. Then ask her again: "And then what would happen?" Ask this until she gets to the place where everything is okay.

With anxiety, we get stuck in the worst case scenario. We play it out in our minds over and over again. We can stop the cycle by moving forward in time. Every crisis, disaster, or tragedy comes to an end and time moves forward. With anxiety we get stuck. It is helpful to create a space to mentally move forward in time to see the solutions.

Another tool is a The Work by Byron Katie. She has an incredibly powerful process to question our fearful thoughts. She has a children's book called, "Tiger, Tiger Is It True?: Four Questions to Make You Smile Again." It is a lovely book that you can read to your daughter to support her in learning how to see her thoughts and start to be more curious about them rather than buying in to the thoughts and becoming fearful.

Curiosity is the antidote to fear. Support her in being curious about what she is believing about the world. Another exercise you can do is, when she has a problem, ask her to come up with two solutions. Let her be as magical and mystical as she wants. Then you come up with two solutions. Again, be magical and mystical at first. Then try it again. Eventually slip in some more realistic ideas although ideally she will be the one to do this first. Make this a curious, playful, fun and imaginative exercise. You want to shift her energy from fear to curiosity.

How much anxiety do you have? Are you a worrier? Do you watch a lot of news with her within hearing distance? Does she hear you talking on the phone or having conversations with other people where you are complaining or worrying? Sometimes we are not conscious to how much of our own fear we are exposing our little ones to. It might be helpful to take a little time to be curious about your own fearful and anxious thoughts and how those may be getting transmitted to your daughter. Also, observe the other significant people in her life and see where else she may be picking up these types of anxious thought patterns.

Highly sensitive child book. Coping skills. I am curious how much it interferes w her life, can she sleep? Eat? Interact with you? Please don't blame yourself. She may be introverted and preschool is Very extroverted, the way I see it, unless you have a kind teacher. My dd didn't want to jump up and down and sing a song before her hand washing turn and teacher let her opt out. Some quiet hobbies such as crafts at home she might like. Is there one girl she likes? Maybe be friend could come over to play. GL

Have you tried a calendar so she can see what happens on which day? I always found it useful to write out their week and activities and let them x out the day once it's over.

Can you talk with her teacher about her shyness and have the teacher help her with friends? My 2nd grandson was very shy and quiet and didn't want to go to school. His M. gave him a special thing to have in his pocket that only he knew about. Some days it was a small rock, a coin, a sticker, a bottle top. It was their secret and he could reach in his pocket and feel it there which helped a lot.

Get the book "The Kissing Hand." I've used it with my grandchildren when they've had to be somewhere they are frightened of and it has really helped.