Juanita Lepage MSW, RSW, BHP

Counselling & Energy Healing (289) 812-8089 Hamilton, Ontario

Validation

Consciously Parenting A Child With Anxiety: Part 1

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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:

  1. Identifying if your Child has an Anxiety Disorder
  2. Understanding Anxious Thoughts
  3. Connecting with Your Child (aka validation)
  4. Shifting
  5. Encourage Connection to The Wise Brain
  6. 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.

  1. 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
  1. 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.)

  1. 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

Validation: How To Support Your Children And Spouse When You Really Don’t Want To

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Your child rolls his eyes at you.

Your partner complains about her work for the 400th time and doesn’t take any of your advice.

What is your feeling in each of these situations?  Anger, irritation, or annoyance is quite likely.

The First Reaction: Defensiveness

It can be easy to get defensive in these situations – you probably feel disrespected and angry that your child rolled his eyes when you asked him to set the table because you work so hard to provide for that child, you do so much work around the house, and your child doesn’t seem to appreciate your hard work.

You may feel a simmering rage that your partner isn’t taking any of your advice after talking about her frustrations over and over and over. You may want to shout, “Just make a decision!” Or “Stop Complaining!”

The Shift To Validation

Validation is about looking at these situations with a different lens.  The lens I’ve described so far is the one where we look at the situation personally and make it about ourselves.  “My child is disrespecting ME” or “My partner doesn’t value MY opinion”.

Validation is a choice to shift the lens from ourselves to the other person.  Acknowledge your reaction and then take a breath and ask yourself, “What is this person feeling underneath the eye roll or complaining?”

Your son could be feeling angry and annoyed to have to shift from doing something fun to something so incredibly boring such as setting the table. That’s normal behavior for a kid.  You are the adult and get to make many decisions for your children. They are the child and must do things you ask them to even if they don’t want to do it.  That can be annoying.

Your partner could be really frustrated with work and may just want someone to say, “That sounds really tough, I can imagine how frustrated you are that you are being asked to work more hours/being treated so poorly/working hard and getting zero credit/fill-in-the-blank”.

The goal of validation is to help a person deepen into their emotions about a situation and feel heard.  Once these things happen, there can be space for problem solving IF needed.

Believe me, I love to give advice to my family – I don’t want to see them in pain or struggling!  I can see possible solutions that maybe they can’t. Yet, if I stop and validate instead, I often don’t have to give any unwanted advice – they can see it for themselves.  We often think people are asking for advice, but really, they just want to be heard.

Often, we are uncomfortable with someone else’s emotions and attempt to change their emotion, so that we can feel better.

Connection

Validation is about connection with the heart instead of the mind. I see you. I hear you.  We slow down and be more present with that person instead of seeing that the act of dealing with their emotions is another “to do” on our never-ending list. If we stop and take 2 minutes to really be there it can make a world of difference.

When Do I Get To Give My Advice?

After the other person appears to deepen into their emotion or relaxes after feeling heard, then we can ask them if they want our advice or want help solving the problem.

With the child who rolls his eyes, there may be zero advice-giving – sometimes just acknowledging that it’s frustrating can be enough.  If there’s more going on in the situation (e.g. swearing at you every time you ask) you can set a boundary AFTER validating them. “You have the right to be annoyed for being asked to do something you don’t like, but it’s not okay to swear me at me”.

With the partner who’s complaining about work all the time, after validating the person you can ask if they want your advice.  If you’re too tired to hear about your partner’s work woes, try saying, “I really want to give you my full attention right now, but I just can’t because I’m so exhausted. I’m a crappy listener when I’m exhausted. Can you tell me more when the kids are watching tv after dinner?” And then remember to ask them about their day when the kids are watching tv.

Want to see it in action? 

Validation, Movie Style!

This is an enjoyable video to watch.  Even if you just watch the first 3 minutes of this video, you will get a feel for what validation can be. The actor TJ Thyne conveys deep connection as he validates others.  His words are not as deep (he doesn’t really know the people he’s validating), yet his connection is strong.  The rest of the video is more of a short story – interesting but more Hollywood than reality.  You don’t need to have this depth of connection to do validation, it’s more important to be authentically you in your connection with your child.

Advanced Skills in Validation

If you have a list in your head of situations or words that are challenging to validate, then consider watching the video by a fellow Social Worker, Natasha Files from Mental Health Foundations. She takes 90 minutes to break it down in the one of the best explanations I have seen.  She teaches viewers how to validate phrases like, ‘I’m fat”, or “I give up”, or “It’s too hard”.  If you feel stuck and confused about validating, this is a great investment of your time that will help you deepen your connection with family members and save hours of time in frustration with them.

Validation Cheat Sheet (adapted from Emotion-Focused Family Therapy)

  1. Take a breath, acknowledge & notice your urge to be defensive – now shift your lens to them instead of you
  2. Attend to the emotion – be present with the person and notice what could be going on
  3. Label the emotion the other person is feeling (take a guess! It’s okay to be wrong)
    • You’re mad at me or
    • You’re frustrated with everything going on at work
  4. Validate the emotion
    • I can understand why you would feel angry, because you’re being asked to do something you don’t want to do, and that it can be annoying that adults tell you what to do at home and at school all the time
    • I can see why you would be frustrated at work because you’re being undervalued, your boss keeps treating you with disrespect, and you’re giving your 100%.
  5. Meet the emotional need
    • Give your son space to feel what he needs to feel – let him be annoyed while he sets the table. You can tell him that he still needs to set table (if he isn’t doing it) and you could let him know that you appreciate the help
    • Let your spouse know that you’re there for them
  6. Fix/Problem-Solve – ask if they want help solving their problem

Like talking about issues of morality with others, emotions are very similar.  We cannot use reason to shift someone’s moral views just as we cannot use reason to shift someone’s emotions. (See my blog post Controversial Conversations With Family & Friends to learn more). Connection is the most powerful tool and validation is great way to connect.

Want to learn more about supporting a child or adult with anxiety?  Stay tuned for a post in February.

 

The Myth of Perfect Parenting

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How many books and articles are there about parenting in this world?  Fifty-two million, three hundred and twenty-two thousand, one hundred and forty-five. Okay, so I don’t know the exact number, but there are too many to count. What is it that we are all seeking as parents?

  • How to get our children to sleep better,
  • How to get them respect us and others,
  • How to deal with their anger and emotions,
  • How to parent a child with different mental health issues,
  • Raising a creative child,
  • Raising a sensitive child,
  • Better communication
  • How to help kids when there is divorce and separation
  • and on and on…

There are many books and articles that will indeed help us as parents with sleep, communication, creativity, mental health and so much more.  I remember watching a YouTube video in the middle of the night about swaddling when my oldest was a few days old – it was very helpful.  I also keep reminders around my place to remind me to validate my children.  My favourite sequence is from Emotion-Focused Family Therapy:

  1. Observe the Emotion
  2. Label the Emotion
  3. Validate the Emotion
  4. Meet the Emotional Need
  5. (Fix/Problem Solve) – (which is written in italics because it’s optional.)

Learning ways to guide and support our children is always helpful.

But then, in the search for good parenting, there is a mythology that somewhere amid all the parenting tricks and tips that somewhere there is a perfect balance of boundary setting and validation with our children.  Somewhere there is a perfect balance of compassion and firmness. If we find it, what will we have… Peace? Freedom? Validation? Happiness?  Harmony? What do you hope to have?

I want peace and relaxation and fun. Wouldn’t it be something if I announced that we’re having chicken for dinner and my kids shouted, “Hooray!”  Or if we took them for a hike and they were so grateful for being outdoors.  Wouldn’t it be great if they just went to sleep and slept until 8am?  How about enthusiasm and gratefulness for having food, clothing, and shelter?  How about if I made a rule about less screen time and they agreed with me because they could see how it made sense for their greater well-being.

I must admit that if my kids started acting like all my ideas were great, that I would wonder if I had entered a portal into a different dimension.

The truth of it all is that our children would continue to do many things we don’t like even if we became perfect parents. 

So where does that leave us? Is there no point in changing our parenting style? Do we have no control about the outcome of the future? Does that mean we don’t need to change anything as parents?  No!  Our children benefit so much from our interest in shifting and changing things that aren’t working in our families.  In fact, we should be giving ourselves a high-five and some kind words.  The purpose of this article isn’t to tell you that all those articles and books are crap or tell you all that work you did was a waste of time. In fact, the opposite is true.

But, if we’re reading a parenting book with the hope of controlling the future outcomes of our children or our relationships with our children, then we are likely to be disappointed.

A lot of parenting books and articles will help us to a certain level with our children. At the same time, if you want to have longer lasting change within the relationship with your child, or you’re in a space where the guidance in books and articles aren’t working, then it may be a time to look within yourself.

If we explore our own wounds and defenses as we parent our children, it can be amazing to see the dynamics shift with our children.  We teach our children that we are not perfect and that is okay. We teach them that it is okay to ask for help.  We teach them that we are not God and they don’t need to respect us because we are their parents but because we show behavior that is respectable.  We can hold boundaries with our children with respect and love. We can react more often with kindness and openness and less out of defensiveness. Ultimately it can help us have a deeper connection with our children.

The types of things we search for about help with parenting say a lot about our hopes and wishes about parenting.  We often start by looking at the problems we are having with our children, and then we can use that problem to shift the lens onto ourselves.

A few questions to reflect on might be:

  • What are you seeking for yourself when you look at a parenting book or article?
  • What are you trying to control that don’t have control over right now?
  • What do you seek more from your child – respect or acceptance? What happens if you don’t get it? How do you feel if you don’t get it?
  • What are you more sensitive to with your children, disrespect or rejection?
  • What are your expectations in your relationship with your children?
  • What are your expectations about parenting?

Think of the best parent you know – do you think that their children always do what they want? Do you think that parent never gets defensive?  What is it that you admire about that parent?  This will also give us clues about what we are seeking as we raise our children.  If you’re feeling bold, ask that parent you admire what it’s like in their household.  If they say, “Everything’s fine all the time”, they’re lying.

As a therapist who is a parent, I can tell you that I still yell sometimes and I lose my temper.  I will try and tell my children to do things because I said so.  My kids didn’t sleep through the night after 1 year.  I have said things that I regret to my children.  My kids have been angry at me. I get into parenting situations where I really don’t know what to do or say.  But THAT is parenting.  Amid all the joys and pleasures of parenting there are also the struggles no matter the parenting style. Self-reflection helps me have compassion for myself in those times when I feel more inclined to feel ashamed or judgmental of myself.

We have lived in a culture where there is a myth that there is a possibility of finding perfect parenting.  There is a myth that we can prepare ourselves for any situation with our child. There is a myth that parenting is about control. These expectations are false.  Parenting can be messy and chaotic. We will all make mistakes – that is a guarantee. We will all do things we will regret later. That’s life as a human. The goal of parenting is not perfection.  One style of parenting does not fit all.

If you want to see longer lasting change with the problems you are experiencing with your children, consider the courageous act of self-reflection and change.  As you make changes within yourself you are likely to feel more freedom, peace, and satisfaction as a parent.

If you enjoy the show Modern Family, consider watching Season 3 episode 23 (on Netflix if you have it).  The dynamic between Cameron and his sister-in-law Claire as they try to behave as adults while they parent completely differently is especially comedic.  If you follow the show over the years you will see that neither of their parenting styles are better than the other.  As a viewer we can find strengths and faults in both styles.  Both parents want the best for their children using very different approaches.