Your Child’s Brain and The Neural Pathways
Likening children’s Neural Pathways in the brain to “express lanes” on freeways makes it easier to understand that, when the mind takes the “express lane”, the brain doesn’t have to be constantly making decisions every time it encounters an everyday run-of-the-mill situation. This is how we all learn. By making children’s daily repetitive tasks easier, the brain is training them to react in a specific way, which means they learn faster, and the faster they learn, the more ingrained their neural pathways become.. and eventually their automatic response system kicks in freeing them to get on with everyday tasks without having to invest too much thought into what they’re doing.
You might have trouble believing this, but this is exactly how your child’s anxiety disorder developed. Remember when you taught your child to tie shoe-laces? Ride a bike? Remember in the beginning how they had to really concentrate? How in the beginning they constantly made mistakes.. until eventually, one day they were able to tie their laces automatically, and the same with riding their bike – they just did it.
Tricks Anxiety Plays In The Brain..
The tricks anxiety plays in children’s brains are so powerful they can disrupt a child’s life in an instant. And anxiety is persistent, even when the fear it evokes makes no logical sense! To make matters worse, the neural pathways triggering the anxiety are created far more rapidly than when they learned to tie shoe laces.
Why is that?
To get a better understanding, compare the tying of shoe laces with placing your hand on a HOT STOVE! Your hand touches the hot stove, the pain is immediate! Severe! Not wanting that experience again, the brain immediately lays down an immense network of neural pathways! And the result? Even if we accidentally touch a COLD STOVE now, we instinctively pull our hand away without thought.
It’s the same with your child – once your child did something, or went somewhere, that caused them some memorable fear – next time they do the same thing or go to the same place, just like touching a hot stove, they have the exact same response as before. Why? Because they’ve been ACCIDENTALLY duped into believing that some indescribable hazard waits for them there!
If you would like more detailed information about helping your child change the old neural pathways of anxiety and fear and start enjoying their young lives again, visit www.anxietysymptomschildren.com