Supporting your child with anxiety - key tips from an anxiety counsellor for kids (and their parents!)
My aim in this blog is to keep things simple and go with some of the anxiety strategies that seem to have the broadest reach; that work for many kids in many situations. I’m listing a few great books, websites etc at the end of the blog too, and if you’re finding that you need more options, please get in touch.
What is anxiety – what happens when our kids get anxious?
First off, what is anxiety; what do we mean when we talk about anxiety; what does anxiety look like in children?
Sometimes anxiety is easy to spot; your child might tell you they are worried or anxious about something. Or you might notice that your child is:
· Not sleeping well – maybe difficulty going to sleep, or waking up a lot
· Having difficulty concentrating
· Tearful or less resilient than usual
· Getting cranky more often, or having bigger anger than usual
· Eating less
· Complaining of tummy aches
Should I be concerned about my child being anxious?
While a little anxiety is normal, you’ll probably want to take further action if you have helped your child to talk about their feelings, worked on some strategies to help them with anxiety, but have any of the following concerns:
your child is getting anxious very often
your child’s anxiety is getting in the way of them doing things they would usually enjoy
they’re avoiding people, places etc they would usually engage with
anxiety is impacting school, family, friendships, or other relationships
How can I help my child with anxiety
Be Proactive
Start working on the skills for anxiety before your kids get anxious.
By this I mean work on foundations, like sleep and exercise (and screen time). Just like with adults, kids get more stressed, anxious, irritable etc when they are tired.
We all need to exercise and move our bodies – obviously family games of football, cricket etc are great for this, but also things like twister, putting on music and dancing around, doing some yoga or stretches together with the kids.
Even 5 or 10 minutes can be a mood booster – and when anxiety strikes, doing 90 seconds of movement can be enough to ‘shake it off’.
Don’t try to get rid of anxiety
It can be easy, and tempting, to try to get rid of your child’s anxiety, for example by doing things for them, letting them skip the test, the sports carnival, the dentist – whatever the anxiety trigger is. However, avoidance is not a good long-term strategy, for a few reasons:
you’re confirming that their fears are correct! By agreeing that they can avoid that event or situation, you’re effectively agreeing with them that it is too big, too hard, too scary,
It’s possible that their anxiety may then generalise, and spread to other people, places etc, and
many things that kids might fear and want to avoid will have to be done eventually anyway. Putting them off may just give the worries time and space to grow!
Instead – help your kids to learn skills and strategies to manage anxiety so their worries aren’t getting in their way.
Strategies to Support Anxious Children
It's as easy as ABC
A well-known acronym from CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) is the ABC, a model created by Dr Albert Ellis. ABC in this case stands for:
A – the Activating event (or the adversity)
B – your Beliefs about this activating event – your view of the situation, yourself, others
C – the Consequences – the outcomes including your emotions and behaviours
The ABC for kids anxiety is:
A – accept – name the emotion – the ‘name it to tame it’ strategy
B – breathe – (we can teach our kids to take a deep breath – suggestions below)
C – choose – having taken a moment, it’s now easier to Choose how to respond rather than having an automatic reaction.
(this strategy works just as well for adult anxiety too!)
Breathing Exercises for kids
Do at home – belly breathing
Lie down with your kid on the floor, sofa, wherever, and get your child to put a soft toy, doll, or character toy on their tummy.
Breathe through your nose and focus on getting the breath into your belly.
Help your child - Show them and encourage them to copy you and breathe into their belly, seeing if they can make the toy on their tummy rise up and down.
Breathe out through the mouth – a long slow breath and focus on getting breath out of the belly – so the belly falls and the toy goes back down.
Get all the family to join in, including siblings even if they don’t seem to have any anxiety or worries, everyone can benefit from pausing!
Do anywhere – 5 finger breathing
Hold your hand out in front of you and stretch out your fingers, like a star.
Use the pointer finger of the other hand to slowly trace your fingers
Starting at the base of your thumb, slowly trace up while breathing in slowly through your nose
Slowly trace down the inside of your thumb and breathe out through your mouth at the same time
Slowly trace up the next finger, breathing in through your nose,
And trace down the other side, breathing out through your mouth
Repeat until you have done all fingers
Check in – how do you feel now? Would you like to finish? Or take another 5 breaths?
Lend them your ‘brain’
When our kids have strong emotions; it’s important that we’re an anchor for them, that we help hold them steady. That can look like;
being calm,
offering a cuddle,
letting them have their emotions and reassuring them that you’re there for them,
getting them moving, dancing, going out on the trampoline, kicking a ball etc.
helping them do a breathing exercise.
Afterwards, when they’re calm, ask what they found most helpful and remember it for next time.
Aim for connection, not perfection
What with TV shows and social media and bloggers, there are so many ways we are bombarded with ‘perfect’ parents. This is where we need to be aware that:
What we see online is not the full picture; people rarely post about their not so great moments.
Aiming for perfection in parenting is quite unhealthy for a number of reasons;
o we don’t want to model perfection as a goal for our kids
o when we expect to do things perfectly, we’re giving our children the message that they have to be perfect too
o we need to give our kids permission (even encouragement) to make mistakes, so that they are open to trying things, rather than frozen by fair of failure.
And when we’re focused on being perfect parents, often we’re missing out on being present and connecting with our kids.
On that note, I’m off to hang out with my kids.
Resources for kids anxiety
Websites
GoZen – online programs and resources with a focus on anxiety, anger, perfectionism etc.
Connected parenting – in particular the podcast which has a broad range of topics and a nice mix of info and tools/strategies
Books
The Whole-Brain Child– by Daniel Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson
Everyday Resilience – by Michelle Mitchell
Great Family Movies
Inside out
The Mitchells vs the Machines