How to Help Your Child Cope With Anxiety at Any Age
When I asked our parent Facebook group what they would like to read about on Offspring this year, I noticed one topic that came up constantly from suggestions – concern. You have it, I have it, and our children already have it, or we fear that someday they will get it. Thinking about their concern makes you anxious, and you need to have some strategies on hand to deal with it when the time is right.
Anxiety is a topic we’ve written about frequently over the years, so I thought creating an overview of all of our favorite anxiety tips might make your life easier. More opportunities in one place, less searching for new ideas.
Anxiety in young children
It’s heartbreaking how our young children can start showing signs of anxiety, but there are several ways we can help them overcome this. However, we don’t have to adjust to their concerns; it is more important to focus on supporting them. If your child is the type of person who asks many questions (often repeated) about how things will go in the future, one way to support them is to set aside some time for “ worrying questions ”:
For example, you might tell an agitated child that he can only ask questions about an event or problem that bothers him — say, a weekend schedule — for only five minutes in the morning and evening. If the anxiety question arises outside the specified time frame, remind the child to wait for the next activity.
Another little trick that we can use for ourselves – is to pretend that they are concerned, in fact, they care about. So when they start talking about how nervous they are to move on to the next swim lesson where they have to deal with the deep end on their own, say, ” Sounds exciting !”
In our body, Robbins explains, excitement and fear feel the same. Our brain determines which one. I’ve used the I’m Excited technique in my life — before my job interview and when I was handed a microphone to make a toast at my sister’s wedding — and it works. The moment I told my daughter that going to the next level of swimming sounds exciting, her mind merged with it. Her voice immediately changed.
Or! If you think this won’t help, you can buy your child a worry eater doll to chew on what worries them:
Anxiety Eaters is a modern monstrous version of Guatemalan dolls that children use to share their worries before putting them under their pillows at night. Guatemalan worry dolls are said to give sleeping children the wisdom they need to overcome worries. With these new closed-mouth versions, kids (or their parents) write or draw their worries and then stick a paper into the Worry Eater’s mouth so that it can hold on to the child’s worries.
If turning that anxiety into excitement or letting a stuffed monster eat the anxiety doesn’t work, you can also try giving the particular fear a cute nickname . Like this:
Walker writes that the nickname should be “light-hearted, not intimidating or negative.” A child who is afraid of germs might call this fear a “germworm,” she explains.
The next idea suits my son very well, who loves almost all the rides in amusement parks but sometimes hesitates a lot when it comes to riding something big, fast, and unfamiliar. Open YouTube and show them what it will be like. Someone before you was already there, did this:
Jamie, a mom of a 4-year-old with an anxiety disorder, told me that this is actually her favorite parenting trick. “I put everything we do on YouTube,” she says. “I’m on Instagram for her new dance teacher. I will be YouTube at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique at Disneyland. Show, show, show in advance. It works every time. “
Is your child worried about going to daycare, preschool, daycare or somewhere else for the first time? Of course have! This shit is scary! And it can be scary not only the first time, but also the second, tenth and thirty-fourth times. So do a little dress rehearsal before leaving home. This idea originally came from New York Times reader Julie Wilson DiColo:
She stands in the office while her husband leads his son down the hallway, pretending to give him a lift to school. DiColo will imitate the teacher by changing her voice and announcing the plan for the day (sometimes as silly as: “Today we will be on our heads!”). Before they can practice grooming, the teachers will have to tear her clinging son away from her husband; now, after a run or two in the morning, he has hardly any tears.
Anxiety in Big Children
For big kids, let’s start with the basics. This may sound obvious, but it bears repeating: we must protect their downtime .
We know that kids are overwhelmed and overwhelmed. We know they have less downtime, less time for boredom, and less time for play than we did as kids. But we may not have realized that all the pressure on students – especially in high-performing schools – is causing higher levels of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and delinquency.
Next: homework. Who doesn’t love a nice fat pile of homework? Parents of children who are anxious just thinking about it, that’s who. But this is often impossible to get around, so if your child starts to worry about how difficult the homework will be before it even starts, try to have him predict the difficulty level ahead of time, and then compare your prediction with how difficult it is. actually thought it was when it was done:
Rating scales are an effective tool that helps us articulate and track our suffering and progress – we adults use them to assess our mental health, assess our pain, and analyze how we deal with situations. Children can use this method too. Having reliable data about their ability to complete tasks can help them refuse “I can’t do this!” to “Actually, I can. Here’s proof that I’ve done this before. “
Any change can be frightening and worrying. But for teens, knowing that their personality and relationships are still changing can have a calming effect :
Teens are highly aware of relationships and social status, but they do not yet have the psychological and emotional toughness to let the social struggles roll off their backs. They also have no life experience to know that setbacks or setbacks are temporary and can be overcome.
But psychologist David S. Yeager of the University of Texas found that giving children information about how they and their peers continue to grow and change has a vaccine’s effect on stress levels.
And finally, our young people deserve self- immersion in trouble , so we looked at a few more important strategies to help our older children cope with anxiety:
Knowing how to help a child with anxiety is difficult: is it necessary to protect the child from all the circumstances that cause anxiety? Free them from school and family responsibilities? Intervene for teachers and coaches when it gets too much?
Dr. Sikeland gives advice to guardians in her parenting workshops, and she told me that she usually gives some basic advice.
Some of these suggestions include defining avoidance, not doing too much for them, focusing on incremental progress, making a plan (even a half-underestimated plan will do), and – my personal favorite – “getting out of the madness.”