Anxious Children

In my last eight years of teaching, I’ve seen more and more children with anxiety: about tests, about friendships, about anything. This has been heartbreaking, as I understand what it feels like—I struggle with significant anxiety myself—and I hate to think about my students going through that so young.

For a long time now, I haven’t thought that I had anxiety at a young age. Surely not. I certainly didn’t know the term. Maybe I’d heard someone say they were feeling “anxious” about something, but more likely it was “nervous” or “stressed” (and even that came later, and was much of what I thought anxiety was for a while).

But this afternoon, I saw Inside Out 2, and now I’m not so sure. Perhaps I did have anxiety all along. (Warning: Potential spoilers ahead, so if you’re hoping to see the movie without knowing much about it, I’d recommend you stop here!)

“My job is to keep her safe from things she can’t see,” the character of Anxiety says when she meets Riley’s other emotions. Anxiety is there to help Riley prepare for the future. In this case, going to high school, trying out for the ice hockey team, and navigating new friendships.

The trigger for all the new emotions is, of course, puberty — there’s a hilarious demolition and renovation scene where the workers take a break and just leave it as is, a mess, which is exactly what is happening in the brains of our fifth graders.

Throughout the film, there were moments that I recognized and could relate deeply to: imagining way too many possible future scenarios, catastrophizing in the middle of the night, panic attacks. Some of those moments were affirming to watch, while some were challenging.

After Riley’s panic attack at the film’s climax, Anxiety cries: “I was just trying to protect her!” A worthy intention, but one that causes so much strife and difficulty in the lives of those of us who struggle with it, particularly when it takes center stage, just as Anxiety takes over the central console in Riley’s brain for the majority of the film.

Anxiety is a natural part of us, but one that’s useful in small doses. I’m still trying to figure out for myself how to make that the reality, developing the necessary skills.

I’m hopeful that films like this one, and teaching approaches like the one we employ in our classroom, will help children to develop those skills earlier.

I’m crossing my fingers that Inside Out 2 makes it to streaming by September so we can watch it with our students and use it as a launching pad for social emotional learning. I have so many ideas already.