Parent Resources

Anxiety in Children

Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Depression in Children

Developmental Coordination Disorder

Dyscalculia

Dysgraphia

Dyslexia

Eating Disorders

Executive Function

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)

Processing Disorders

PTSD in Children

Selective Mutism

Speech Disorders

Tourette Syndrome

When a child does not outgrow the fears and worries that are typical in young children, or when there are so many fears and worries that they interfere with school, home, or play activities, the child may be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

Statistics

• Up to 1 in 5 kids will develop anxiety disorders
• Nearly 1 in 3 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 has anxiety

Symptoms

• Feeling nervous, tense, and restless
• Finding it hard to sit still
• Having a sense of impending danger, panic, or doom
• Increased heart rate
• Sweating
• Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry or anxiety
• Trouble sleeping
• Easily angered
• Finding it difficult to control or manage worries
• Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
• Feeling weak or tired
• Children may use the bathroom a lot or refuse to go to school

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ADHD, or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, is a condition that interferes with a child’s development or functioning, and is marked by a consistent or recurring pattern of inattention, impulsivity and/or hyperactivity. This may lead to challenges at school and at home, and may appear in the form of struggling to focus on schoolwork or other tasks, difficulty paying attention or sitting still, and trouble controlling impulses.

Statistics

• According to the CDC, “An estimated 7 million (11.4%) U.S. children aged 3–17 years have been diagnosed with ADHD.”
• Although ADHD is often identified in a child during their early school years, more than 60% of children continue to present symptoms as an adult.
• ADHD is diagnosed more in boys than in girls.

Symptoms

• Easily becomes distracted
• Consistent fidgeting or squirming
• Being very energetic and having a hard time sitting still
• Lack of patience
• Constantly talking and interrupting adults or peers
• Difficulty with organization
• Makes careless mistakes and misses details in schoolwork or other activities
• Frequently forgets or loses things
• Appears like they are not listening when spoken to
• Finds it challenging to follow through with instructions they have been
  given
• Starts a task, but often loses focus and gets sidetracked
• Inability to play or engage in activities quietly

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According to the National Autism Association, “Autism (ASD) is a bio-neurological developmental disability that generally appears before the age of 3. Autism (ASD) impacts the normal development of the brain in the areas of social interaction, communication skills, and cognitive function. Individuals with autism typically have difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interactions, and leisure or play activities.”

Statistics

• Autism Spectrum Disorder is diagnosed four times more often in boys than girls
• Affects 1 in 36 children
• About 40% of kids with ASD do not speak with the same frequency as other kids their age
• Autism Spectrum Disorder is treatable but early intervention is crucial

Symptoms

• Isolation
• Difficulty with communicating or speech
• Abnormal physical actions or movements
• Intense fascination
• Hypersensitivity

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Feeling sad or hopeless is often a part of every child’s life. However, some children feel this way all the time, are uninterested in things they used to enjoy, and feel helpless or hopeless in many situations. When children feel constant sadness and hopelessness, they may be diagnosed with depression.

Statistics

• Depression affects all age groups
• 15.08% of youth (12-17) report suffering from at least one major depressive episode in the past year
• 300 million people worldwide suffer from this disorder

Symptoms

• Mood changes: The child might appear sadder or more irritable than usual
• Feeling hopeless
• Lacking energy or being tired all the time
• Trouble concentrating
• Poor performance or poor attendance at school
• Low self-esteem or saying negative things about themselves
• Trouble sleeping
• Eating problems (eating too little or too much; gaining or losing a lot of weight)
• Thinking about or attempting suicide

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Children who are very uncoordinated for their age may have a disorder called Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), or dyspraxia. These children commonly drop, break and bump into things. They may have trouble with small movements like eating with a spoon or holding a pencil. However, nothing is wrong with their muscles. Instead, these coordination issues occur because their brains have trouble telling their bodies what to do.

Statistics

• It is more common in boys than girls
• 5% of children have DCD

Symptoms

• Delayed in physical milestones, like sitting, crawling, and walking.
• Trouble with coordinating both sides of the body, called bimanual coordination, such as holding a paper with one hand and writing on it with the other.
• Lack of desire to write or use one’s hands, or more gross motor skills like running or riding a bike.
• Disengagement with peers in order to isolate oneself from physical activity.

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Dyscalculia is a learning disability that affects the ability to learn arithmetic and mathematics in someone of normal intelligence, as compared with those of the same age who receive identical instruction. It may cause difficulty with counting, measuring quantity, working memory for numbers, sequential memory, ability to recognize patterns, time perception, telling time, sense of direction, and mental retrieval of mathematical facts and procedures. Dyscalculia is a lifelong condition that can hinder academic progress and self-esteem; however, it can be managed with treatment, especially that which is initiated in early childhood.

Statistics

• 5-10% of school age children are estimated to have dyscalculia.

Symptoms

• Difficulty adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers, or getting inconsistent results when doing so
• Problems understanding the rules of math or memorizing mathematical facts and formulas
• Trouble identifying which quantity is largest or smallest
• Difficulty reading analog clocks
• Challenges performing mental math
• A persistent need to count on one’s fingers after peers have ceased to do so
• Trouble with money-related tasks such as making change, calculating tips, or estimating sale prices
• Difficulty estimating values like speed, time, or distance
• Difficulty telling right from left or orienting oneself in space
• Frequent lateness or poor time management

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Dysgraphia is a learning disability that makes it difficult for children to write. There are two sides to dysgraphia — motor weaknesses that affect the physical process of writing, and cognitive challenges with written expression.

Statistics

• 7-15% of people have dysgraphia
• More common in boys than girls

Symptoms

• Consistent difficulty with forming letters, making them the same size, and spacing them correctly. Letters may be clustered together without spaces or not in a straight line.
• Trouble holding a pencil, such as holding it awkwardly or needing to grip it extra tight.
• Writing fatigue — Hand cramps or pain due to awkward grip or heavy pressure.
• Difficulties with writing mechanics, like spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
• Trouble organizing their writing — they might have great ideas, but have a hard time getting them down onto paper in a coherent, structured way.

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Dyslexia is most commonly associated with difficulty in learning to read. It affects a child’s ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds in language. Kids with dyslexia have a hard time decoding new words, or breaking them down into manageable chunks they can then sound out. This can cause difficulty with reading, writing and spelling. They may compensate by memorizing words, but they’ll have trouble recognizing new words and may be slow in retrieving even familiar ones.

Statistics

• Dyslexia is the most common learning disability
• About 1 in 5 kids are dyslexic
• 80-90% of kids with a learning disorder(s) have dyslexia
• Equally effects boys and girls

Symptoms

• Struggles with learning even simple rhymes
• Has a speech delay
• Has trouble following directions
• Repeats or omits short words (such as: and, the, but)
• Finds it difficult to tell left from right
• Has difficulty sounding out new words
• Lacks fluency compared to other children their age
• Reverses letters and numbers when reading (ex: reads “saw” as “was”)
• Finds it difficult to take notes and copy down words from the board
• Struggles with rhyming, associating sounds with letters, and sequencing and ordering sounds
• Stumbles and has difficulty spelling even common words; frequently they will spell them phonetically (ex: “hrbr” instead of harbor)
• Avoids being called on to read out loud in front of classmates
• Becomes tired or frustrated from reading
• Finds it difficult to decode logos and signs
• Struggles when trying to learn the rules to games
• Has difficulty keeping track of multi-step directions
• Struggles with getting the hang of telling time
• Finds it especially challenging to learn another language
• Becomes incredibly frustrated, which can affect their mood and emotional stability

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Children with eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder, experience extreme disturbances in eating behavior.
Mayo Clinic states that “eating disorders are serious health conditions that affect both physical and mental health. These conditions include problems in how one thinks about food, eats, weighs, and in eating behaviors. These symptoms can affect health, emotions and ability to function in important areas of life.”

Statistics

• Often appears in teenagers and adolescents going into college
• 13% of adolescents will develop an eating disorder by the age of 20 (3.8% of females, 1.5% of males)

Warning Signs in Adolescents

• Skipping meals or snacks or making excuses for not eating
• Having very limited diet (not prescribed by a trained medical professional)
• Too much focus on food or healthy eating (especially if limits activities or participation (ex: not eating birthday cake or dining out)
• Making own meals rather than eating what family eats
• Constant and ongoing worry about being unhealthy or overweight
• Frequent checking in mirror and complaining about what is thought to be flaws
• Repeatedly eating large amounts of foods’ using dietary supplements or laxatives for weight loss
• Exercising much more than the average person
• Leaving during meals or right after to use the toilet
• Talk of disgust, shame, depression, or guilt about eating habits
• Eating in secret

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Executive functions are mental skills that we all use every day. Organization, problem-solving, planning and memorization are all executive functions. Some kids (even very bright ones!) have trouble with executive functions. Kids with executive functioning issues often have trouble keeping track of schoolwork and staying organized. They might forget to write down assignments, lose homework, and have trouble following directions.

Symptoms

• Being very distractible or having trouble focusing on just one thing.
• Focusing too much on just one thing.
• Daydreaming or “spacing out” when a child should be paying attention (such as during a conversation, meeting, class, etc.).
• Trouble planning or carrying out a task because of trouble visualizing the finished product or goal.
• Difficulty motivating oneself to start a task that seems difficult or uninteresting.
• Struggling to move from one task to another.
• Getting distracted or interrupted partway through a task, causing misplaced items or losing train of thought (like losing keys because another action item came up before leaving the house)
• Problems with impulse control, like snacking when trying to manage a diet.
• Struggling with thinking before talking, causing you to blurt out the first thing that pops in your head without considering that it might hurt someone’s feelings.
• Having trouble explaining your thought process clearly because you understand it in your head, but putting it into words for others feels overwhelming.

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Children with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) have intrusive thoughts and worries that make them extremely anxious, accompanied by rituals they feel compelled to perform to keep those anxieties at bay.

Obsessions: Unwanted and intrusive thoughts, impulses, or images
Compulsions: Behaviors or actions that kids actively do (ex: arranging objects in a certain way) or things done mentally (ex: counting in head or repeating phrases)

Statistics

• OCD usually begins in adolescence and is seen in about 1 in 200 children and adolescents
• About 8 in 10 people with OCD experience their first symptoms by the age of 18

Symptoms

• Fear of dirt, germs, or touching contaminated surfaces
• Doubts about household safety (ex: check if door is locked or windows are shut)
• Preoccupation with presentation, organization, or appearance (ex: symmetrical arrangement of things) and making sure things are “even”
• Anxiety about accidentally hurting a parent, friend, or sibling
• Superstitions that bad things will happen if they do not perform an unrelated behavior (ex: closing the door a certain amount of times)
• Avoidance of situations where the child believes “something bad” will happen
  Rigidity about bedtime or mornings
• Sexual orientation anxiety (worrying about being gay when you’re straight or vice versa)
• Extreme cleanliness
• Need to repeat words or prayers to prevent bad things from occurring

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Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is diagnosed in kids who are unusually angry, throw tantrums, don’t follow rules, or purposefully harm others. While all kids do these things from time to time, children with ODD show extreme versions of these behaviors for at least six months. Often, parents feel overwhelmed by their child’s behavior and aren’t sure how to help them.

Statistics

• ODD is typically diagnosed around early elementary school ages and stops being diagnosed around adolescence
• A child with ODD will have had extreme behavior issues for at least six months
• 10% of people will have ODD

Symptoms

• Being unusually angry and irritable
• Frequently losing their temper
• Being easily annoyed
• Arguing with authority figures
  Refusing to follow rules
• Deliberately annoying people
• Blaming others for mistakes
• Being vindictive
• Another hallmark of ODD is the toll it takes on family relationships. Regular daily frustrations — ignored commands, arguments, explosive outbursts — build up over time, and these negative interactions damage the parent-child bond and reinforce hostile patterns of behavior.

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A processing disorder is a disorder in which a child struggles to effectively use the information gathered by the senses. If the brain’s processing of auditory, visual, and sensory information is impaired, a child’s ability to learn and thrive in an academic setting is affected, often leading to low self-esteem and socialization difficulties.

Processing Disorders can be categorized into 3 main categories: Sensory, Visual, and/or Auditory. (Details about each are found in the handout.)

Symptoms

• Over-responsive to sounds, textures, or other stimuli
• Trouble hearing background noise
• Distracted and inattentive behavior
• Attention disorders
• Falling behind in reading and spelling
• Asking for information to be repeated

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When we think about post-traumatic stress disorder most of us probably picture a soldier who has been in combat. In fact anyone — including children — can develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), because anyone can experience trauma. However, not everyone who experiences trauma goes on to develop PTSD, even if they are showing the early signs of what looks like the disorder. Anyone can experience an event and have a natural recovery period. PTSD is diagnosed when a child is stuck in the recovery period.

Statistics

• If a child is still struggling one month after a traumatic event, they might have post-traumatic stress disorder.

Symptoms

• Unusual irritability
• Difficulty concentrating
• Being easily startled
• Nightmares
• Difficulty sleeping
• Significant change in mood
• Significant change in the way she views the world, her relationships, or herself
• Feelings of guilt or shame
• Seeming detached or estranged from others

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When children are unable to speak around certain people or in certain settings, they may have an anxiety disorder called selective mutism (SM). It is common for kids with SM to be very chatty at home with family but silent at school. Parents typically start noticing signs of SM when a child is three or four years old. The disorder might not be diagnosed until the child is school-aged, as this is when problems with speaking become more apparent.

Statistics

• This disorder is rare; less than 1% of the population has SM
• It is equally likely to develop in boys and girls
• Children with selective mutism often have another anxiety disorder, most often a social anxiety disorder.

Symptoms

• Talking freely at home, but becoming completely or mostly nonverbal at school or around strangers
• Inability to speak even to familiar adults (such as parents) in the presence of others
• Difficulty talking with peers in school
• Seeming “shut down” or “paralyzed” in social situations
• Using gestures, facial expressions and nodding in place of verbal communication
• Selective mutism is more common among children who speak a second language. Being bilingual doesn’t cause SM, but for kids who already have an anxious temperament, being expected to use a language they are less comfortable with can put them at additional risk.

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A child with a speech disorder may have difficulty with speech and sound production, voice, resonance, or fluency (the flow of speech).

Statistics

• About 5% of children ages 3-17 in the US have a speech impediment that lasts for a week or longer
• More than 3 million people in the US have had or still have a stutter (about 10% of the total U.S. population)
• Without treatment, children might have a hard time learning how to read and write
• Children with speech impediments often develop anxiety and depression

Symptoms/ Reasons for Concern

• The child doesn’t babble using consonant sounds (spec. b, d, m, and n) by age 8 or 9 months
• The child uses mostly vowel sounds or gestures to communicate after 18 months
• It is still hard to understand the child’s speech by the age of 3
• Frequent loss of voice
• The voice is hoarse, harsh, or breathy
• Can’t control muscles used to speak
• Repeat sounds or syllables
• The child holds out certain sounds or syllables

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Tourettes is a neurological autosomal dominant disorder that involves repetitive movements or unwanted sounds (tics) that kids cannot easily control.

Statistics

• Tics typically show up between ages 2 and 15, with the average being around 6 years of age.
• Symptoms may get worse between the ages of 8 and 12
• Males are more likely to be affected than females

Tics in Tourette Syndrome

• Tics can involve movement (motor tics) or sounds (vocal tics). (More details on these can be found in the handout.)
• Tics can vary in type, frequency, and severity and can worsen if one is stressed, sick, anxious, tired, or excited
• Tics can change over time and worsen in the early teenage years and then improve during the transition to adulthood
• Tics can be categorized into “simple tics” (eye blinking) and “complex tics” (repeating movements)

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