When High-Functioning Anxiety is Misread as “Such a Good Child!”

Two children both reading but one may have high-functioning anxiety and be considered a good child

Picture this scenario on parents' night. Your child is praised for being punctual. For listening well in class. For being confident enough to help other children. For organising the PE cupboard. For getting full marks in spelling – every day.

Hang on a minute. Isn’t this sounding too good to be true?? Could there be another explanation? Like: your child is actually manifesting the symptoms of high-functioning anxiety and the teacher is missing it? Just seeing them as "such a good child!"?

Sounds drastic. But well...

Maybe you’ve suspected something was going wrong, but then you thought, surely anxiety means they’d be timid, refuse to meet new neighbours, reject new foods, have constant tummy aches, and all the other symptoms? 

Well, no. High-functioning anxiety implies two things (and maybe others, of course):

  1. Your child manages to find a way to deal with the anxiety by constant achievement
  2. You, as the parent, kind of don't notice – because it seems “good”, and we all want a good child!

So –

How can you work out if your child has high-functioning anxiety?

Of course, you may be the parent in a million who has a thoroughly wonderful child and none of this applies! But I'm talking here about the other 99.9% of children who seem “good, quiet, achievers” but could perhaps be anxious through and through.

They probably aren't, but it's worth considering for a moment.

So let’s have a look at some symptoms you might well realise are present in your super-good child:

  • They tend to overthink things – like wondering for 15 minutes if they got the homework instructions right before starting the story they have to write.
  • They over-analyse everything – like when you suggest a way forward, they can always think up a hundred nervous objections or what-ifs before reluctantly going along with it.
  • They seem to be losing sleep and getting more tired than they should, given their bedtime – are they waking at night ruminating on something that’s got to be done?
  • Are they very, very wary of failing at some task – like rehearsing and practising their lines or spellings a zillion times the evening before, and at breakfast too!
  • Do they agree very readily to anything you ask them to do? In other words, they need to be the perfect child.
  • Have you noticed they pick their skin or jiggle their feet a lot? I exaggerate, but little signs can show anxiety.
  • Do they, in fact, have stomach aches but insist on pushing through?

Only one or two of these? Well, you can ignore it. On the other hand, if lots apply, give it some further consideration. But first...

Did you cause high-functioning anxiety?

I bet you’re wondering if you caused it! The good news is, probably not. Although if your family members, going back, have always been anxious, it’s possibly in the genes.

However, there are other possibilities.

Maybe your child experienced something frightening that left them out of control. After all – their "thinking" goes – if you tighten up on everything and win, win, win, you might prevent something else bad happening. 

Or perhaps your child has a medical condition and you thought they were managing it really well. Could the medical problems have pushed them to a desperate search to be perfect in other ways – to make up for the one “fault” they may perceive themselves as having? 

However, sometimes the cause is never known, and it's no one's fault.

How you can start sorting out the signs of possible high-functioning anxiety

I knew a child who couldn’t draw even an invented flower for fear of getting it wrong. (Is there ever a wrong invented flower?)

This child was already in therapy with me, so therapy is one way of helping to sort things out before issues become monumental problems in adult life.

But there are earlier ways to try and help your child to take a different path.

Here are a few.

Strategies and tips to help your child become less perfectionist and high-achieving when you suspect it’s stemming from anxiety.

1 Practise allowing everyone in the family to be less than perfect.

Laugh about failures – in a positive, non-accusative way – and make light of them. Bother, bother try again is a good mantra.

2 Be transparent about your own failures to live up to your own expectations. They adore you, so if you can be less than perfect and deal with failure positively, so can they!

Talk about how you didn’t manage quite as well as you'd hoped to.

3 Teach everyone in the family some calming techniques. High-functioning but anxious children experience their anxiety internally – it doesn’t usually come out as poor behaviour or tantrums.

So, having calming techniques available is something you can make sure they have available to use. You could try these for size:

4 Check no one in the family is accidentally demanding perfection – sometimes by wanting something done or learnt or managed before the age at which your child can realistically achieve it. 

No child wants to fail a parent’s expectations, so they’re going to push themselves, and push themselves – squashing the anxiety it’s causing by trying even harder… You can see where this ends up. With a high-functioning but anxious child!

5 The obvious one: assure them they're loved whatever they do or do not achieve or get into trouble for. 'Nuff said!

On the other hand...

Maybe you do have the perfect child who’s super intelligent, always perfect, and destined for greatness.

In which case ignore all this! It was just a thought for you to consider.

But even if you're concerned, the problem shows itself on a spectrum. So you can gently intervene now – before full-blown therapy becomes necessary. 

And in that case, maybe one of these  tips will help you stave off your child's desire for perfectionism that's at the root of high-functioning anxiety. Give it a go?

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