When Your Kid Feels Sick Every School Morning
You used to be so anxious watching your kid feel sick before school. The mornings have their own rhythm now, the stomachaches, the worry showing up in her body before she even has the words for it. You feel it land in your own chest. Your breath gets shallow. The whole day already feels off-kilter, and it has barely begun. By the time you are buckling her into the car, both of you are running on fumes.
She performs poorly on tests you know she has studied for. You have sat with her. You have quizzed her. You know she knows the material. But something happens between home and that classroom, and the answers slip somewhere just out of reach. The anxiety eats them alive. She comes home flat. You can see it in her shoulders before she even tells you how the day went.
It is not just the tests. It is the other kids too. The hallways, the lunch table, the group projects. You watch her shrink back. You see how badly she wants to do well, how badly she wants to belong, and how much that wanting is costing her.
If your kid is older, in high school or away at college, the picture looks different but the worry is the same. The text messages from her dorm at 1 a.m. The grades that do not match the smart kid you know she is. The quiet during phone calls that used to be lively. You are watching her struggle from further away, and it does not hurt any less.
You lie awake wondering if you are missing something. You love this kid so much it knocks the wind out of you. And no matter how hard you try, you cannot fix this for her.
Underneath the worry, something else is still alive in her. The wanting. The fact that she is still trying. The way she lights up when she gets something right, even when the lighting up is fast and quiet because she does not quite trust it yet.
She is still in there. The bright kid, the funny kid, the kid who cared enough to be nervous in the first place. Anxiety did not erase her. It just got loud.
Little Dove Psychology is a small group practice. The work described on this page is provided by our clinical team. Meet our team →
The work is grounded in evidence-based approaches that actually move the needle on anxiety: cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure-based methods, parent coaching, and protocols designed for tough situations like school refusal. None of it is rigid. The science gets shaped to fit the young person in front of our clinicians and the family she belongs to. In practice, that usually looks like:
This is not about turning her into a different person. It is about helping the bright, sensitive, funny human you already see come through more often, with less weight on her shoulders.
Sometimes the person who needs the anxiety work is you. Parenting an anxious kid is anxiety-producing in its own right, and plenty of Austin parents carry their own morning knot: the work stress, the mental load, the 2 a.m. worry loops about the kid, the job, the everything. We offer dedicated therapy for parents and caregivers, and in family work we often help parents manage their own anxiety so it stops amplifying their child’s. If your young person is heading to or already in college, our therapy for college students page covers how anxiety work looks at that stage.
Our team works with kids, teens, and college students. Anxiety can show up at any age, and the approach adjusts to fit a six-year-old, a fourteen-year-old, or a twenty-year-old's actual life.
If anxiety is showing up in her body (stomachaches, headaches, trouble sleeping), interfering with school or college, or shrinking her world by making her avoid things she used to enjoy, those are real signals worth taking seriously.
Often yes, and sometimes there is also something physical going on, so it is worth ruling that out with her pediatrician. School-related stomachaches are one of the most common ways anxiety shows up.
Both, and on purpose. For kids and teens, parent coaching is core. For college students, family involvement is on her terms. Some young adults want their parents in the loop, others want the work to be theirs alone. Both are fine.
That is great. If she is 18 or older, we can work together directly. She is the client. Family can be involved in whatever way she chooses, including not at all.
Yes, with the right setup. Online sessions work well for many kids, teens, and college students. We offer online therapy across PSYPACT states (including Texas), which works especially well for college students away at school.
Little Dove Psychology is in network with Aetna, UnitedHealthcare (UHC), and Optum, and we are projected to be in network with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas by late September or early October. For self-pay families, we are happy to provide a superbill you can submit for possible out-of-network reimbursement.
Look for a therapist trained in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure-based work. Those are the gold-standard treatments for anxiety in kids, teens, and adults. For a child or teen, you also want someone with experience working with parents, because anxiety treatment for young people is most effective when family and school can support the work between sessions. Credentialed psychologists (PhD or PsyD) and licensed therapists with specific anxiety training are good places to start.
The 3-3-3 rule is a grounding technique that can help in the middle of an anxiety spike. You name 3 things you can see, 3 things you can hear, and then move 3 parts of your body. It works by pulling attention back to the present moment when anxiety has pulled it into worried thoughts about the future. It is not a cure for anxiety, but it is a useful in-the-moment tool, especially helpful for kids and teens, who can use it quietly at school, in the car, or before bed.
Some signs that warrant a consult with an anxiety therapist in Austin: your child has physical symptoms (stomachaches, headaches, trouble sleeping) that doctors cannot fully explain, school refusal or avoidance of normal activities, racing thoughts at bedtime, perfectionism that is making her miserable, social withdrawal, or panic-like episodes. Anxiety in kids and teens often masquerades as defiance, irritability, or laziness, patterns that do not make sense until you understand the anxiety driving them. A free 15-minute consultation is the simplest way to figure out whether what you are seeing warrants professional support.
For younger kids (5-10), anxiety therapy in Austin involves a lot of parent coaching, behavioral practice, and play-based exposure work. For tweens and teens (11-17), the work shifts to direct skill-building: cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure work, and learning to manage anxiety in real-life scenarios like school, friendships, and performance. For college students, the work often focuses on navigating independence with chronic anxiety, panic management, and balancing academic and social demands without burning out. The core methods stay the same; the delivery flexes to fit developmental stage.
It is built on gradual, collaborative exposure work. We map the situations your teen avoids (the cafeteria, raising a hand in class, ordering food, parties), build a ladder from least to most scary, and climb it one rung at a time while teaching skills for the physical wave of anxiety. Most socially anxious teens in Austin engage well with online sessions, because starting therapy from their own room removes the hardest first step. Parents get coaching on how to support the practice without accidentally taking over.
Research consistently shows online anxiety therapy is as effective as in-person therapy for most anxiety presentations in kids and teens. In fact, some kids do better virtually because the home setting feels safer, and parents can join sessions easily without coordinating logistics. The exception is severe school refusal where in-person practice is part of treatment, but even there, online sessions can do much of the parent coaching and skills work between in-person practice sessions.
Some anxiety is developmental and resolves naturally. But research is clear: untreated anxiety in childhood is the strongest predictor of anxiety, depression, and substance use problems in adulthood. The good news is that anxiety responds extremely well to treatment: anxiety therapy in Austin using evidence-based methods like CBT and exposure work has some of the best outcomes of any kind of therapy. If your child has had anxiety symptoms for 3+ months and they are affecting daily life, treatment is more likely to help than waiting.
This is common with anxious kids: the anxiety itself fights against treatment because change feels scary. We work with you on several strategies: framing therapy as skills-building rather than fixing what is wrong, starting with parent-only sessions so the child sees you putting in the work first, doing a no-pressure first session focused entirely on getting to know your child, and using motivational interviewing techniques to help your kid arrive at her own reasons for trying it. Many initially-reluctant kids become engaged within 2-3 sessions.
For most kids and teens with anxiety, expect 12-20 sessions over 4-6 months for meaningful change. Severe anxiety, panic disorder, OCD, or anxiety stacked with other concerns (ADHD, depression, family conflict) often takes longer: 6-12 months is typical. We use outcome measures to track progress, so you will see in real numbers when things are working. Anxiety therapy in Austin is not open-ended; we are working toward your child managing anxiety without needing weekly therapy.
Physical signs: stomachaches, headaches, sleep problems, eating changes. Behavioral signs: avoidance of school or social situations, perfectionism, irritability, withdrawal. Cognitive signs: catastrophizing, what-if loops, intrusive worries. Social signs: friend conflict, withdrawal from activities she used to enjoy. If you are noticing two or three of these clustering and lasting more than 2-3 weeks, a consultation with an anxiety therapist in Austin can help you figure out whether what you are seeing warrants treatment or is something a few skills can address at home.
Every family’s situation is different, and these FAQs cannot answer everything. The simplest next step is a free 15-minute consultation with our team. We can talk through what you are seeing in your child, what an anxiety therapist in Austin would actually do, and whether Little Dove Psychology is the right fit for your family. No commitment, no sales pitch, just a real conversation to help you figure out the next step.
Take the first step with a free 15-minute consultation. Call (512) 240-2633 or contact us online.
“Dr. Kroll is kind, compassionate and professional. She takes the time to truly listen and never makes you feel rushed or judged. Her calm, approachable style and expertise make a huge difference, and I would confidently recommend her to anyone.”
“I can’t recommend Dr. Kristin Kroll at Little Dove Psychology highly enough. She is extremely knowledgeable and brings years of experience to every session, and you can tell she genuinely cares and is invested in helping you.”
“Would very highly recommend Little Dove Psychology for mental health therapy.”
