Separation Anxiety
Children with Separation Anxiety
A very unfortunate event which always happens is when the
child bids a teary and tantrum-filled goodbye in his early
years. Sometimes around the child’s first birthday it
is not rare for him to develop separation anxiety which simply
means that the child gets easily upset when the parent has
to leave him with someone else.
Separation anxiety is often considered as being a normal
part of childhood development but it is quite unsettling as
well. One needs to understand what the child is experiencing
and consider some strategies about how to deal with such situations
which would help both the parents as well as the child to
cope with periods of separation.
Separation anxiety is first seen in the child when it gets
separated from caregivers to whom it has become attached and
used to having around all the time. As long as they feel that
their needs cannot be met enough, they throw tantrums.
The child aged from four to seven months develops object
permanence and learns that people exist even when they are
out of visible range and at such time the child begins games
such as dropping things over the side of high objects, looking
for them and expecting adults to retrieve the objects for
them. This is commonly seen in cases when the parent leaves,
at this stage of growth, the child does not yet understand
the concept of time and thus, does not know when the parent
will return.
When the child grows to one year of age, he becomes more
independent but is still more uncertain about being separated
from the parent and it is now when separation anxiety develops
further, resulting in the child becoming more agitated and
upset. The separation anxiety may vary from child to child
and some children may feel it at a later age and still others
may only feel it when they are more than two years of age,
while some may not experience it all.
This leads to one question: how long will it take for the
separation anxiety to vanish? Well, the answer seems to be
that it varies from child to child. It is also dependent on
how well the child and the parent adjust and respond to each
other. There are certain cases where the children whose temperament
leads them to feel separation anxiety throughout their elementary
school years. And, when separation anxiety begins to hinder
their normal activities it may be seen as being a sign of
deeper anxiety disorders.
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