I often hear adults say they wish they could escape the constant stress and anxiety of being adult and go back to be being a little kid when they had no worries; what they often fail to remember is that being a little kid can be just as stressful and anxiety inducing as being adult.

Sometimes the stress and anxiety kids experience is caused by problems in the adult world. Maybe your parents are getting divorced. Maybe you hear gun shots in your neighborhood. Maybe a parent is battling opioid addiction. These are just a few or the 1000s of adult issues that can cause stress and anxiety in young children.

However, even the mundane and fun parts of early childhood can cause anxiety. Case in point is the game Duck, Duck, Goose. Waiting for someone to pick you in Duck, Duck, Goose is stressful as f***! First off, when you are 5 years old waiting for anything patiently is really hard. Second, we all know there are subtle social implications of who gets picked in Duck Duck Goose. Usually the person who picks you is a friend. When you have to wait a long time to get picked you start questioning if you have friends. It can get even more crushing when someone you think is your best friend picks someone else. Worst still is if someone is picked twice before you are picked once. But the absolute worst is when the teacher (or some other adult) has to remind someone that you have not been picked yet and they need to pick you. All that is stress, anxiety, and embarrassment wrapped into one. 

You think I am being dramatic? Imagine your boss at work says for a fun team building activity, you were all going to play Duck, Duck, Goose. Now imagine, you were picked last or your boss had to remind someone to pick you. You would probably go home at night questioning if people at work even liked you  and what your social standing was. ( I mean what If you thought that you and Jane in HR had a Jim and Pam from The Office flirtation going on but then Jane picked ******* Bob from accounting in Duck Duck Goose?! You would probably go home that night and listen to sad emo Dashboard Confessional and Drake songs and wonder where it all went wrong while searching for a new job) 

Back to Duck, Duck, Goose. I know what a few of you are thinking. I am going to argue that we should ban or cancel Duck, Duck, Goose; then someone will do a rant about the “Everyone gets a trophy” generation” and coddling kids. 

First off, I am not going to say we should cancel Duck, Duck, Goose ( more on that later). Second, the reason every kid gets a trophy is not to make to the kids happy but to placate their insecure parents. You think a kid really cares about a cheap plastic trophy in the long run? Heck, 1/4 of the kids probably don’t even like playing soccer or Little League. And the kids who do like playing and care, even at age 5 know what the score is, and who won the game so getting a trophy when you lose is not going to make them feel much better. The trophies are for the parents to feel like they end up getting something for paying the league fee that they can put on display in the house or take a picture of their kid holding and post Instagram. 

Ok, back to Duck, Duck, Goose. We should not ban it. Yeah it is stressful and can cause anxiety. But do you know what else causes stress and anxiety when you are a young child? Nearly everything. It is stressful that someone packed you a lunch that you don’t like. It is stressful that other people are faster when you play tag. It is stressful when your best friend says that you have to pretend to be Olaf and they have picked a new person to be Anna to their Elsa. It is stressful, when you are with a group of 5 friends and they decide to be ninja turtles and since there are only 4 turtles you can’t play with them. (Note, I think I read somewhere that there are 5 turtles now but I am staying with original cannon for this article). It is stressful when your friend calls you a baby because you still are rocking a “Paw Patrol” lunch box. It’s stressful when everyone in class seems to have seen that new Minions movie opening weekend and you have not and don’t know what they are talking about. Or even worse you found out that a group of them went to see Minions together; I guess you couldn’t fit into Stacy’s mom’s Subaru but somehow Kimi, Juan, Becky, Madison, Fatima, and Deepak all were able to fit. 

The point of this peace is not that we should get rid of everything that causes stress and anxiety for young children. That is impossible. Stress and anxiety are part of being human. But we need to stop pretending that being a young kid is not stressful. Moreover, we need to label feelings like anxiety for young children so they can talk about them and let them know that adults feel anxiety too. Best of all, we should help children learn coping skills for dealing with stress and anxiety of both the super serious issues like the aforementioned gun and opioid problems but also for dealing with the stress and anxiety of waiting to get picked in Duck Duck Goose.