Separation Anxiety in 7-yr-old boy

[Melonhead]

In the last couple of months our 7-year-old son has developed a stong and increasingly frequent struggle with what appears to be separation anxiety.  We are a two-parent family with a 10-year-old boy as well.  Both boys are normal and have never before appeared to have any physical or psychological problems.  The 7-year-old has cried when sleeping over at friends' houses on two separate occasions in the last several months and has called my wife on her cell phone repeatedly on those occasions.  My wife occasionally does some volunteer work at the school and when she is there in the same room with our son he starts to cry when she is trying to leave.  He has told both my wife and I that he misses us when he is at school and he told my wife that he is sometimes afraid that we will not be there when he gets home from school.  My wife is home four-days-a-week when he and his brother get home from school and on the other day she or I pick both of them up from an extended day program at the school.  He is an excellent student, liked by almost all of his classmates and his teacher.  He plays sports, is in cub scouts and otherwise seems to interact very well with other children.  The crying and anxiety goes away after a relatively short time and/or when he is kept busy with play activities,etc. He and his brother have always been very close although his brother is becoming a little more independent and it is not always as "cool" to hang out with his little brother.  He calls his brother a crybaby sometimes when these separation anxieties happen in his presence (i beleive it's a little embarrasing to him when his brother is crying when he and other kids are around).  PLEASE ask me questions as we want to do everything that we can to help support our son and to help him get through these difficult times as easily as possible.  Thank you.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Your description is quite clear and indeed suggests separation anxiety disorder. Sometimes, in children who are vulnerable to this condition (e.g., children with a family history of anxiety or who have a baseline temperament that is shy/reticent), some upset in their environment can trigger the reaction. Unless the problem is severe it can usually be managed quite well by a short-term course of outpatient therapy that employs a cognitive-behavioral orientation. It would be very sensible to arrange an evaluation for your son with a child psychologist or other pediatric mental health clinician.