Unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more common for kids to deal with anxiety. According to the CDC, 21% of children between the ages of 3 and 21 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.

When previous generations experienced anxiety during childhood, they were mostly taught that they just had to deal with it. Now, kids are getting accommodations at school for their anxiety, and experts think it’s a bad thing.

Some students with anxiety have as many as 20 different accommodations to help them in school.

That’s according to an op-ed by Ben Lovett and Alex Jordan that was originally published by the Boston Globe and re-shared by Columbia University’s Teachers College. Lovett is a professor of psychology and education, while Jordan is a psychologist and lecturer. They said that most of these accommodations are “avoidance-based,” which means that they remove the thing that causes anxiety from the student’s life.

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Lovett and Jordan were firm in their opinion on this. “But as psychologists who’ve studied and treated anxiety for decades, we believe that this approach — eliminating whatever makes students nervous — is making the problem worse,” they wrote. “Here’s why: Anxiety feeds on avoidance.”

They explained that the “gold standard” for treating anxiety is actually exposure therapy, or exposing the patient to whatever makes them anxious. Avoidance is the opposite of this, so all it does is place a temporary band-aid on the anxiety. It doesn’t actually help.

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Other educational leaders agreed with Lovett and Jordan’s take.

Justin Baeder, Ph.D., described himself as an “education philosopher and author” in his TikTok bio, where he is known as @eduleadership. Baeder made a video that was a direct response to the op-ed that Lovett and Jordan wrote. He confirmed that an anxious kid avoiding what makes them anxious in the first place will just cause a vicious cycle that leads to more anxiety.

“Like, if you have anxiety about public speaking, well, public speaking is not actually harmful,” he said. “It’s not actually dangerous. And you are accommodated in that anxiety by getting out of public speaking … that is going to harm you as a student, and reinforce the idea that you can’t do it, that you don’t have what it takes, that the situation is just unmanageable.”

Baeder explained that not forcing kids to face whatever scares them is just holding them back in their education. “What we’ve got to remind ourselves of is that students are capable,” he insisted. “Students do rise to challenges. And students need to be challenged in order to get an education.”

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It’s possible that some students are confusing anxiety with something less intense.

A fellow TikToker left an interesting comment on Baeder’s video that could explain some of this behavior. “The word ‘nervous’ has been replaced with the word ‘anxious,’” they said. This is a solid point. True anxiety is a mental health condition that often requires treatment. But, in a world where kids seem to be coddled a little more than they used to be, it would be easy for them to confuse their nervousness for anxiety.

Counselor Sheryl Ankrom, MS, LCPC, explained the difference between the two. “Nervousness is a natural reaction to a stressful situation. It usually hits when you face a new or important challenge, such as taking an exam or giving a presentation to a room full of people,” she said. “Anxiety, on the other hand, is something you deal with on an ongoing basis. You live your life in what feels like a constant state of dread, and you struggle to calm yourself.”

Even if kids aren’t conflating nervousness and anxiety, exposure therapy is still the best option when dealing with anxiety. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Studies show that exposure therapy helps over 90% of people with a specific phobia who commit to the therapy and complete it.” Avoidance does nothing to truly help anxiety, and it’s just making things worse for these kids.

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Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.