Parents have often asked me, “Why is my child hypervigilant?” They go on to describe a state in which their child carries an unending anxiety, at times a low-level caution, other times a full-blown, panicky fear. While anxiety is a normal part of childhood, it should be an occasional part. To address a child’s hypervigilance, it’s best to first understand what’s driving it. Here are the 3 key reasons why children are hypervigilant.
Reason # 1: Hypervigilance is useful
Kids aren’t born being hypervigilant; they learn it. And while their hypervigilance is clearly troubling, it’s an “adaptive response.” In other words, to kids, their hypervigilance serves a purpose: it’s useful!
Hypervigilance helps kids feel safe. They believe that if they’re always watchful, they’ll catch the danger in time to keep themselves (and others) safe.
Confirmation bias—in which someone interprets new experiences to fit in and confirm their existing beliefs—plays a key role in this perspective. Every time a child is hypervigilant and nothing bad happens, they can interpret this as the result of their caution.
For example, terrified a robber will break into their home, a child continuously checks their doors are locked. The child is feeding the hypervigilance by telling themselves that only by being hypervigilant are they preventing a break-in.
In reality, were the child to do nothing, it’s very unlikely anyone would rob them—and locking doors doesn’t necessarily prevent a robbery!
Reason # 2: Kids want power/control
With children, there’s an additional component to why they are hypervigilant. Because kids naturally have little power or control, they often exist in a state of uncertainty. Being small feels like a potentially dangerous and helpless condition. When children become hypervigilant, they often have the fantasy that their hypervigilance will improve their lack of control or power: by always being alert, they can anticipate danger and avoid it.
When speaking to a child’s hypervigilance, it is often helpful to also name these feelings.
Reason # 3: Trauma
When kids become hypervigilant, trauma is frequently a piece of the puzzle. Trauma overwhelms a child’s ability to cope, leaving them terrified, powerless, and confused. They aren’t able to make logical sense of the traumatic experience; they only know that they want to avoid further trauma.
Hypervigilance is frequently their go-to solution. Rather than rely on others to protect them from further trauma, they fantasize their ever-alert state will prevent future trauma.
Reason # 4: An underlying narrative
At the root of hypervigilance always lies a narrative based on the child’s experiences or misperceptions. This narrative drives the hypervigilance. (For more on what narratives are and how they work, check out my key post, “Childhood Narratives: How They Impact Kids for a Lifetime”.)
When addressing a child’s hypervigilance, knowing the child’s specific narrative is critical. Here are 4 common narratives that accompany hypervigilance:
- “No one else is watching out, so I have to.” In the child’s past experience, they feel their caregivers couldn’t protect them. If no one else is watching out, then obviously they have to do so. (For a quick example of this, check out the short-short story, “Full Lockdown,” about a young boy’s resulting narratives after witnessing a tragic death.)
- “Grown-ups won’t keep me safe.” As with the above example, following a perceived lack of caregivers’ protection, the child feels they have to keep themselves safe.
- “Bad things unpredictably happen.” ‘Unpredictable’ is the key word here, suggesting the child feels powerless to control what happens. Hypervigilance is their solution: they will try to predict—and watch for—all the possible bad things, as if by seeing them coming they will have some sense of control.
- “I couldn’t stop the bad thing from happening.” Here, the child feels both responsible and inadequate. Hypervigilance is their way of trying harder and taking on more responsibility to manage future “bad things.”
What parents can do
Rather than addressing hypervigilance as a broad idea—that’s going the intellectual route rather than the emotional one—it’s far better to address the unique feelings and narratives that lie at the root of an individual child’s hypervigilance. For this reason, it’s crucial to understand the nuances and specifics of the narratives that drive a child’s hypervigilance. It’s also helpful to know where those narratives come from.
For instance, let’s take a child who is always trying to please grown-ups, who is constantly afraid of making adults angry, who will run and hide if any adult appears even slightly annoyed. Their narrative is “Don’t make grown-ups mad.” Or, “Angry grown-ups are terrifying.”
But where does the narrative come from? If we learn that the child’s father is an alcoholic who, when drinking, frequently becomes rageful, the puzzle pieces start to align.
To help this child, we need to name the complexity of their feelings and fears: they feel not only afraid, helpless, and small, but feel their father’s behavior is overwhelming, unpredictable, and their own fault.
Fearfulness is but the tip of the iceberg. Under the child’s fear lies other misperceptions and feelings: 1) guilt for making their father so angry, 2) shame for being a bad kid, and 3) lack of trust, based on experiences with the father.
As you can see, the parent’s job isn’t easy because it means addressing not just the hypervigilance—which is only the very tip of the iceberg—but all the complicated emotions underneath.
Addressing a child’s emotions is more fully explored in the following posts: “Naming Emotions: a Key Part of Successful Parenting” and “Talking About Hard Subjects: Using an Indirect Approach.”
(And for another perspective on hypervigilance, check out the short-short story, “Full Lockdown,” about a young boy’s intense response to a school lockdown.)
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