Welcome to the Wired Differently podcast where we chat all about how to best support exceptional children.

I'm your host, Holly Blanc Moses, the mom psychologist who gets it.

Thank you for joining me today.

We are going to talk all about differently wired children and anxiety.

And we all experience anxiety at one point or another. Some of us probably daily. But it's different

for differently wired children because anxiety for them can be debilitating. And it happens a lot.

Over 40% of differently wired children also meet clinical levels of anxiety or at least one anxiety

disorder. They also have trouble just emotionally regulating themselves.

Another reason why it's important for us to talk about anxiety is because they have trouble communicating what they need and what they want in a way that makes sense to us.

Anxiety also impacts their social ability.

A lot of them have a history of being rejected by peers, and that can create a lot of

anxiety so much so that they just don't think it's worth it to try to make friends anymore.

Anxiety, and I think this is such a big one, it's often mistaken for

challenging behavior. So let's just look at a couple examples. What if you really struggled

with certain schoolwork or you had an overwhelming feeling when you were asked to do a lot of things

at once that were maybe confusing. Maybe you avoid it, maybe you escape it, maybe you scream,

no. This looks like challenging behavior on the outside, but it's actually based in anxiety. It also

impacts schoolwork. This is a really big one. So what looks like refusing or unwilling to do

school work or homework or participate in a small group in school, it can be based in anxiety.

Anxiety can sometimes be so big that it actually outweighs rewards.

So you may have experienced this with a client or your child or a student to where you said,

if you do this, then you can have this. So your plan on

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