5 Steps for Reducing Your Child's Anxiety

Anxiety and worry are a normal part of childhood, and of life. Major life transitions and new experiences like starting at a new school, moving, beginning a new activity, or having a first sleepover are likely to cause your child some worry. This is relatively normal – in general, as we become more accustomed to new situations, our associated worry/fear of what could go wrong begins to dissipate. Yet when anxiety and worry become so big that they impair a child’s every day functioning, it may be time for increased parental intervention. Here are some signs that it may be time to intervene:

Your child seems worried more often than not
Your child reports physical symptoms of anxiety: upset stomach, headaches, nausea, muscle tension
Your child has trouble sleeping
Your child exhibits avoidance behaviors for mandatory activities such as school, doctor’s appointments, or activities they once enjoyed
Your child exhibits a lot of anticipatory worry about upcoming events, or things that “might happen,” such as an earthquake, or a death

If you feel your child’s daily functioning is being significantly impaired by anxiety, here are some ways you can help:

1) Talk to your child about worry

Tell your child that we all worry, and that worry plays an important role in our lives. For instance, worry can tell us when we’re in a dangerous situation and need to get out! Explain to your child that if we listen to worry all the time it will come visit more and more. Tell your child that instead of always listening to worry, we can train ourselves to know when to trust worry, and when to tune it out.

2) Externalize Worry/Anxiety

Giving anxiety/worry a name of your child’s choosing can serve to externalize the problem, and show your child that their worry is not an inherent part of who they are. Giving worry a silly name can also make it feel less powerful, and can make it easier to reference and talk about. Get creative and goofy with this step. The more fun you can make this for your child, the more buy-in you’ll get.

3) Recognize Bodily Symptoms

Help your child identify the physical symptoms of worry. Recognizing these symptoms can allow you/or your child intervene earlier in the worry cycle by implementing appropriate coping strategies, and can build your child’s overall awareness of how anxiety feels in the body. Teaching your child diaphragmatic breathing is a great starting place for coping with the physical manifestations of anxiety.

4) Relabel and Challenge Anxiety Thinking

If you notice your child engaging in worry thoughts or exhibiting physical symptoms of anxiety, you can help your child recognize what’s going on by saying, “it looks like worry has come by for a visit,” or “is that worry whispering in your ear again?” This relabeling further externalizes worry, and helps your child build awareness of anxiety’s presence.

If you notice your child asking a lot of “what if?” questions, encourage your child to explore the “what else” alternative. This conditions them to get off the worry track. You can begin by providing the “what else,” but over time, encourage your child to come up with it on their own.

Example:

“What if I mess up at school and everyone laughs at me?” “Well, what else could happen? Perhaps if you mess up, nobody else will notice.”

“What if we crash on the way to the store and die?” “What else could happen? Maybe we’ll get there safely like we have every time before.”

5) Don’t let Anxiety Take Charge

The easiest way to empower anxiety is to shy away from those everyday activities that are causing your child to worry. If your child has school-related anxiety, do everything in your power to get them to school each day. Steering clear of anxiety-producing activities reinforces avoidance as an acceptable method of coping.

Consider creating a reinforcement menu of anxiety-producing scenarios, and create a positive reward for each. Have your child begin with the least threatening activity, and work their way through the list. Success breeds success, so make sure to start small! And if you’ve been using avoidance, give yourself a break. Sometimes parents do what they must to get through each day. If you’ve been using avoidance and make the decision to take away avoidance as a coping strategy for your child, understand that this is a major shake-up to your family system, and things may get worse before they get better.

There are varying degrees of childhood anxiety, and it can present in different ways. If anxiety is severely impacting your child’s everyday functioning and is leaving you at a loss for what to do, consider consulting with a mental health professional.

References:

http://tamarchansky.com/tools/normal-anxiety-red-flags

http://drkristiwolfe.com/nine-red-flags-generalized-anxiety-disorder-kids-teens/