Dar es Salaam — YOU are at your wits’ end after reassuring, coaxing, encouraging, and telling your child or teen they know how to do what they aren’t doing. Your child still stalls at the starting line. Simple homework assignments are met with agony. Even small decisions seem overwhelming in your child’s mind.
They keep asking the same questions, and you are exasperated because your answers and reassurance just are not helping. From the outside, this easily looks like defiance, procrastination, or a good old-fashioned lack of caring and effort. But within your child’s unsettled, spinning mind, it is overthinking.
And then, guess what, you start to overthink. You wrack your brain with thoughts like, “If they can’t cope now, how will they make it in life?”
The most misread struggle in capable children and teens
Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines
Many of the children in my counseling practice are bright, sensitive, and conscientious. They certainly don’t wake up each day saying to themselves, “What things can I do today to make my life miserable and the lives of those around me miserable, too?” To the contrary, they want to do well. And, that is why their minds get stuck in overdrive. Overthinking takes over their brains with thoughts like,
“What if I do this wrong?” “What if I forget when the test is in front of me?” “What if this paper is not good enough?” So they pause, and maybe they seek reassurance. Or, they numb themselves with distractions through video games or social media.
ALSO READ: Lip gloss returns as beauty favourite
As I discuss in my book, Freeing Your Child from Overthinking, the more these kids overthink, the more they pause, and the harder it is for them to take steps forward. Sadly, parents or even school personnel begin to focus only on the visible behavior–the delays, the resistance, and the emotional reactivity–instead of the invisible cause.
Children’s brains are sponges for the wrong conclusions Based on more than 30 years of working as a child, teen, and family psychologist, I can tell you there is nothing more heartwrenching than a child inwardly thinking, “Something is wrong with me,” because that belief, far more than the anxiety itself, lowers their confidence and resilience.
Much of this overhanging spiral laden with inner shame gets unwittlingly amplified by parents who say, “You’ll be fine,” or “You know this”, or “Just start.” What these parents don’t understand is that, most of the time, overthinking isn’t a knowledge problem. It is actually a mental traffic jam going on in the child’s brain.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
When hearing the adult prompts, the child thinks, “I can’t cope unless someone helps me do this.” In short, what begins as support becomes dependence.
The hope that most families miss
We need to realize that overthinking is highly treatable. Not by removing a child or teen’s sensitivity or deep thinking, which are often strengths, but by introducing boundaries and direction.
The goal is not to raise a child who has no worries. Rather, the goal is to raise children and teens who can recognize that their upsetting thoughts don’t define them as a whole. That belief is the foundation of lasting confidence.
The takeaway
When a child is mired in overthinking, what they lose first is not their outer performance. Rather, they lose the sense of being capable. The sooner we identify this pattern, the faster we can empower our youth to have a sense of agency, capability, and resilience.