When Homework and Daily Tasks Feel Impossible: How CBT Helps Kids Get Unstuck
We have all procrastinated something at least once in our lives. Whether it’s putting off a difficult task or avoiding something that feels overwhelming, avoidance can be a very human response to stress. For kids, however, repeated avoidance around homework, chores, or responsibilities can be a sign that something deeper is going on. Especially in kids, if your child seems to put everything off until the last minute, no matter how small, it may be indicative of a larger anxiety issue.
If your child appears to avoid most tasks even when such avoidance consistently brings them negative outcomes, it may be time to introduce them to a Cognitive Behavioural (CBT) therapist. CBT can help them confront their anxieties head-on so that they can live their lives normally and prevent their avoidance from worsening as they grow older.
Signs Your Child is Experiencing Anxiety & Avoidance
Anxiety is influenced by our beliefs about the world. If we believe we are in danger, our natural reaction is to avoid said danger. Here are some examples of anxious tendencies that lead to avoidance:
Believing one will fail, is incapable of doing well, or that a task is much harder than it is in reality.
Experiencing elevated heart-beat, excessive sweating, or trouble breathing when thinking about a daunting task.
Procrastinating with excuses or distractions to avoid facing a task.
Anxiety is a normal biological signal that indicates the need to take extra caution in a situation. This can be helpful when the anxiety is warranted by the context. However, once anxiety starts showing up in non-threatening situations, it becomes a problem that leads to avoidance behaviors.
CBT Therapy & Anxious Avoidance
CBT therapy helps individuals gradually expose themselves to what they fear and manage anxiety symptoms, which prevents future avoidance.
CBT therapy gently interrupts this cycle by teaching skills such as:
Cognitive restructuring: challenging anxious thoughts and comparing with proof grounded in reality.
Exposure therapy: slowly facing fears, with the help of a therapist, to disprove anxious beliefs.
Managing physical anxiety symptoms: mindfulness, breathing exercises, and grounding exercises used to calm physical anxiety responses to anxiety, which helps with facing tasks rather than avoiding them.
CBT teaches individuals about how their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs influence their behaviors. For example, if we believe we are doomed to fail, we are likely to feel physical anxiety symptoms, and, as a result, avoid the task that is making us believe we will fail.
From an evolutionary perspective, anxiety once helped humans survive real threats. However, if we perceive an external threat that does not really exist, this causes us to run away from normal situations as if they were predators trying to attack us.
CBT helps kids recognize whether the threats they perceive in their daily life tasks are truly threats, and manage anxiety symptoms, so that it becomes easier to face tasks that were previously avoided.
You Will Get Through This
It is hard to get a child to complete normal tasks, especially when we are unaware that their avoidance may stem from anxiety, rather than laziness. As a parent, it can be difficult to recognize when a child is experiencing anxiety because they are not yet old enough to properly articulate their feelings.
If you or your child may benefit from learning to face anxiety inducing tasks head-on, CBT may be right for you.
Contact us to book a free 15-minute consultation with one of our CBT therapists today. Let’s work together to help your family overcome avoidance and face reality with confidence.
