Consciously parenting a child with anxiety is both rewarding and tough. Our first reaction may be to get someone else to “fix” our child’s problem. This has been the first step in supporting children for a long time in the therapy world. As a parent it can feel overwhelming and intimidating to put the lens on ourselves instead of our children. More research is showing that if parents makes shifts in their lives and also learn different ways to support their child that the outcomes are better for your child. Read anything by the physician and author Gabor Maté and this will become clear. I will explore this more in Part 2.
That being said, there are still some basics in supporting a child with anxiety and it’s helpful for parents to understand the framework.
Today will focus on the moment you wonder if your child has an anxiety disorder and how to support them. Here is a breakdown of future posts.
Part 1: I have a child with anxiety and don’t know what to do
Part 2: I have a child with anxiety and they’ve been in therapy, but I need help supporting them
Part 3: I have tried the regular approach to supporting my child with anxiety but I’m searching for alternative methods to help them
Part 4: I want to understand what is going on in my family from a spiritual lens
Part 1: I have a child with anxiety and don’t know what to do
Supporting an anxious child can be tough. Maybe you have a child that acts out or maybe you have a child that has stomachaches, headaches or panic. Anxiety manifests in different ways.
Today I’m going to give you a brief break-down of conventional ways to support an anxious child. I won’t lie, there are TONS of resources online to learn about anxiety and how to support your child. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is the GO-TO starting point for supporting a child with anxiety. It provides a framework for understanding anxiety and practical approaches to helping your child.
In summary, CBT helps you connect your emotions, behaviors, & thoughts. It will give you tools to help you shift your thoughts or your behaviors so that your emotions can shift too.
The following is a combination of things I have used with my clients and recommendations from experts. Let’s start with the cheat-sheet to give you an overview of supporting your child.
Cheat-Sheet:
- Identifying if your Child has an Anxiety Disorder
- Understanding Anxious Thoughts
- Connecting with Your Child (aka validation)
- Shifting
- Encourage Connection to The Wise Brain
- Action: Taking Steps to Overcome Fears
Step 1: Identifying if your child has an anxiety disorder
Worry & anxiety is normal. It’s when it starts interfering with life that a person can be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. It could be an intense fear about something specific (e.g. dogs), it could be extensive worries about everything, it could be acting out behaviors that look like anger and tantrums when going to school, or it could show itself with physical symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, nausea, or panic. The main clue is that something is interfering with day-to-day life.
Example:
If you have a child who’s afraid of snakes and you live in Ontario – that fear is unlikely going to be a problem because snakes are fairly easy to avoid. However, if the intensity of that fear stops a person from doing things they enjoy such as camping, going outside, or on playdates – then it has become problematic.
- When in doubt go to your doctor and they can help you determine if it’s diagnosable.
- If you first want to research it yourself, the book– Freeing Your Child From Anxiety by Tamar E. Chansky is an excellent resource for summarizing each type of anxiety disorder and helping you assess if your child fits into one of them.
Step 2: Understanding Anxious Thoughts Yourself
Before supporting your child, it’s important to have some understanding – especially if your child’s anxiety seems ridiculous and frustrating. If you want the anatomical understanding about anxiety and the brain, google it. There’s a lot out there. Today, I’m going to put it into kid language.
The brain has different parts and one of them is the worry part of the brain. We all have a worry part in our brain, and the worry brain is an important part. Imagine you were in the jungle and you heard the grass start to rustle. It could be something small or it could be a lion. The worry brain will tell you to find a safe spot. Without the worry brain you might get eaten by a lion.
Sometimes the worry brain starts over-acting. You have other parts of your brain, but the worry brain is the loudest. If a person is afraid of dogs, then with every dog or even pictures of dogs, the worry brain tells you that it’s dangerous and you need to get away. The other part of your brain – the wise brain helps you pause and listen to all parts before deciding about whether a dog is dangerous or not.
As a parent you can name the parts of the brain whatever you want – the important part is using kid language. I don’t know about you, but even as an adult – as soon as people start describing structural parts of the brain and their function, I start falling asleep.
Prefer a video explanation? Here is simple explanation of what the world can be like for a person with anxiety.
Step 3: Connection to your child (aka Validation)
Any parent of an anxious child has said things that are unhelpful – how could you not? You have a million things going on in your life and now your child is needing more attention and interfering with your routine. Don’t be hard on yourself. Take a deep breath and try again. Connection with your child is the MOST helpful thing for your child. They need to know that you’ve got their back no matter what happens in their life. As much as you want to rush them out the door and drop them off at school, (or keep them at home and never let them face their anxieties), connection is key.
Think of 3 reasons why your child might be scared/worried/anxious and then fill in the blanks.
“I can understand why you would be worried about ________ because ________ because _______ and because __________. This is from Emotion Focused Family Therapy. With each because you use, the nervous system relaxes more. See how many reasons you can come up with.
Example:
“I can understand why you would be scared to go to school when your worry brain is pointing out all the things that could go wrong BECAUSE Your worry brain is saying, “it’s not safe to go to school”, BECAUSE your worry brain is pointing all the things that could go wrong, BECAUSE your worry brain is thinking about all the bad things that might happen.”
Remember: You CAN’T reason with emotions. You need to connect with the person first. See my blog post: How to support your children and spouse when you really don’t want to
Step 4: Shift
Your child is stuck in their head and in their thoughts, and their body is quite likely to be tense. When we are tense it’s hard to make a shift in thoughts. Here are 2 ways to help your child shift – there are many ways – you can be creative.
Activity One
Clench your fists really tight, then let go. Now let’s take 3 deep breaths (in through the nose and out through the mouth), lift our hands up to the sky and then to the ground, rub your hands together while counting to 3, rub your thighs while counting to 3 and then think about a couple of things that make you happy – petting the cat, playing Minecraft, sitting with mom.
This shift is taken from the book When My Worries Get Too Big! A relaxation Book for Children Who Live With Anxiety by Kari Dunn Buron.
Activity Two
3 things – Say aloud 3 things you see, 3 things you hear and 3 things you feel (by touching), then you reduce that to 2 things you see, hear, & feel. Then 1 things. You can make this activity 5 things or 7 things – it’s whatever works.
Step 5: Encourage Connection to the Wise Brain
Once emotions have settled, then you can engage the part of brain that looks at reason. Emotion does not care about reason. If you’re having a tough day, and I try to use reason and tell you to relax and that your problems are no big deal, i’m doubtful that you will relax.
- Explain to your child about different parts of the brain that you learned about in step 2. You can give the names worry brain and wise brain if you want, or your child can give them a name (e.g. scaredy squirrel brain and batman brain).
If you want, you can use a book to guide you both.
- When My Worries Get Too Big! A Relaxation Book for Children Who Live With Anxiety by Kari Dunn Buron
- Now let’s say your child is fearful about school. Ask your child, ‘your “worry brain” has a lot to say today, and what does the “wise brain” have to say about going to school?’ Perhaps wise brain will tell your child that school is safe, my teacher is nice, I like my friend Haley, it’s hard for the first little while at school but then it gets better, today I have gym – I like gym.
(NOTE: If there’s bullying involved you’ve entered a different territory – then we need to listen to the worry mind and do some problem-solving with teachers and coach our children for those situations.)
- What thoughts make you feel better? The worry thoughts or the wise thoughts? Remember that worry is a choice – imagine that worry is in one hand and wise/calm thoughts are in the other. Remember we need to bring BOTH into each situation, not just the worry thoughts.
There are numerous creative strategies to engage the wise brain. If you like lots of examples, get the book:
- Freeing Your Child From Anxiety
Step 6: Action – Taking Steps to Overcome Fears
If your child sees a therapist, they will help you create a ladder or scale of steps for your child to overcome their fears. If I’m afraid of dogs, the worst thing you can do is bring a dog and put it next to me. That is traumatizing and overwhelming.
Start small – you might find that the first step is reading a positive story about dogs or looking at a video of a dog doing adorable things. Your child will guide you. This is what a therapist will call Exposure. You need to stay on each step of the ladder long enough for anxiety to both rise and calm.
What About Medication?
Sometimes medication is necessary to help a child. A lot of research has shown the benefits of medication and therapy used together. Not everyone agrees with medication and not everyone benefits from medication, but many people do. You don’t need to start with medication, but it’s important to consider it if therapy isn’t working on its own.
These steps may look like they will take a long time. Like trying any new things, it will take longer at the beginning, but after some practice it can be done in a few minutes.
Resource List:
- Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt (great for kids who are scared to go places)
- When My Worries Get Too Big! A Relaxation Book for Children Who Live With Anxiety by Kari Dunn Buron
- Freeing Your Child from Anxiety by Tamar E. Chansky
