Anxiety Question.

Try to focus on what looks right with your child and not what looks wrong. Anxiety would be caused more by environment and not genetic.... at least that's my uneducated opinion. Your child may be feeling your anxiety and that is why he's starting it. This would be a good time to put yours in complete check and not pass on the dysfunction to your child if it's at all possible. Putting your kid on anti anxiety chemicals at an early age will only damage his liver and shorten his life. jmo

You need to start talking him "down" from those attacks.

Give him some tools like, I notice that you are feeling worried, or panicked. That is an okay way to feel. When you feel that way, you need to slow down, look at something that is not moving, (like a lamp, table, wall, etc.) and start breathing slowly......

Give him the tools that you use to calm yourself down. Do it every time you see him start to panic, and have all the adults that take care of him do it. Doing it while he is young will give him a "tool box" for later situations.

Also letting him know that others struggle with the same problem will let him know that he is not alone.

LOL You didn't give him this anymore than you gave him his hair color. I think most of us have something "wrong" with us if we re being honest. Instead of worrying because you"gave " him anxiety think about treatment for him.

Before this sounds ignorant I have a child with ADHD and my 2nd has Autism and ADHD. Things happen work on treatment and your son will be fine. :)

Anxiety and other similar disorders are passed on to our children through both genetics and environment. You can't change the genetics that you have passed to your child, but you can work on the environment. If you have learned any techniques to manage your anxiety, teach these to your son. If you haven't done this for yourself, now is the time to learn some, for you benefit and his. Counselors, coaches, and other support people are available to work with you to manage and reduce your symptoms. Regular physical exercise has been found to be as effective as commonly used medications for anxiety, for example.

(The book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain" by John J. Ratey gives the scientific evidence for my statement above.)

I had anxiety all my life but put forth a sunny exterior so that it was well masked. In my 40's I began having serious anxiety and found that it was related to a time of day. I dealt with it. Four years ago I sought out a homeopath to cure me of asthma which had developed in my mid thirties. Lo and behold the asthma and the anxiety were related. He gave me a remedy for the anxiety and since then no asthma, very little anxiety.
You live in Washington Bassitier in Seattle turns out good homeopaths. Find one who has been dealing with families for ten years and bring your son to him. Go yourself. It is so nice not to have angst over anything.

I think my oldest son has our families' lineage of anxiety as well, which runs strong on both sides. I see it in how he picks his lips, how he shuts down at certain situation, how he must complete play tasks in a certain order or he goes nuts. It takes one to know one. My second boy seems like he will be spared.

Your doctor will probably say they can't say anything definitively until your son is 3. That's how it was for us. Now that my oldest boy is four, his anxiety is even more clear to me. The good news for all of us is this: there are much better treatment options today than there every were before.

Best advice? Treat YOURSELF first. Manage your own anxiety via Cognitive Behaviorial Therapy, if you have the time and money. Get on Lexapro or some other SSRI. Work at it. Because you are going to be a model for how to deal with life. I try to get my oldest a lot of exercise, as that is a natural method of coping. I prep him for new situations as much as possible, explaining what things will look like, who will be there, etc. I've even looked up You Tube videos of kids doing karate before we went to our first class, so he could have a visual. This helps decrease anxiety.

Another stray thought: asthma. If there is any chance of allergies/asthma in your family, I'd keep an eye on that as well in regards to the breathing issues. You can have had "pregnancy-induced asthma" which would be obvious when having a panic attack. Just a thought.

Good luck. Know that there are worse things to genetically inherit, and that anxious people have traits that are often advantageous to successful lives, if channeled properly.

Grandma T nailed it. He could be feeling your anxiety and kids are very sensitive to the enviornment around them. That by the way is not laying blame on you, only making you conscious of what you put out there. My son has anxiety. Partially maybe because my hubs at toddler age had the weight of the world on his shoulders and is a worrier and partially because I had a medical emergency when my son was 2 and thought it didn't effect him, becasue he was only 2, but it did in a big way. He sees a therapist and we have tools now for him to use to navigate his way through what could be an anxious moment for him. See what the dr says, but don't worry too much, if he has anxiety, he is young and he can be helped.

A lot of anxiety is learned behavior. The best way to deal with this is to be a good roll model. I know when I am having anxiety it seems to get the kids going and makes them harder to deal with.

My friend who is a Master level Nurse and a professor of Nursing told me once that she basically learned her fear of being on bridges came from her childhood...it took her many years of counseling to finally uncover the cause. As a child every time her mother felt stressed or anxious or depressed, she would tell the family she was just going to go throw herself off a bridge.

How sad the mom said that and she didn't really mean it but the little girl my friend had been internalized that and feared bridges and had a loop of thoughts of her mom dying by jumping off bridges every time she saw one coming up. It wasn't even a conscious thought but more subconscious.

So, keep trying very hard to stay positive and work on helping him build confidence and a good self image/self worth. The more he has of that the less the anxiety can overwhelm him.