How To Parent An Anxious Child
How To Parent An Anxious Child
As a parent, you want to do whatever you can to protect your child from feeling upset. Which can be a good parenting philosophy to follow…except when it comes to anxiety.
Whether it’s a class speech, a visit to the dentist, or being away from mum and dad, anxious kids (like anxious adults) like to avoid situations that make them anxious. The more anxiety provoking the situation, the more desperate your child will be to avoid it, which is why massive meltdowns start when feared situations loom near.
And if they’re that upset, surely pushing your child to face their fears is a bad idea, right? Wrong.
Avoidance will resolve your child’s distress in the short-term, but it’ll actually make their anxiety worse overall. Why? Because each time your child avoids an anxiety provoking situation, they miss an important opportunity to catch their worries out. Not only do they miss the opportunity to learn that their worries can’t be trusted – because the worst-case scenarios they insist are foregone conclusions actually aren’t – they’re also robbed of the chance to see that their worries have been sabotaging their self-belief, tricking them into thinking they can’t cope when in actual fact they can.
The solution to anxiety isn’t avoidance, it’s bravery. Yes, facing anxiety provoking situations head on will make your child more anxious initially – which means you’ll no doubt feel more anxious as well – but as he or she learns that worries are gross over-exaggerators, this will start to shift. The more practice your child has at facing their fears, the more proof they’ll have of just how unreliable, untrustworthy, and deliberately misleading their worries are, and slowly but surely their anxiety will taper off as a result.
Seeing your child distressed will make it hard to persevere, but when you feel yourself starting to waver, remember this – in their day to day comings and goings, your child will continue to experience anxiety whether you encourage them to face their fears or not, only this anxiety will be wasteful anxiety. It’ll feel awful and worsen over time, without any real purpose. By encouraging your child to face their fears, you’re encouraging productive anxiety. Productive anxiety feels just as awful as the wasteful kind, but it’s purposeful. It’s anxiety that will help your child to feel less anxious in the future, and that’s what makes it worthwhile.
If you’re ready to look at changing how you help your child with their anxiety, here’s a few tips to get you started.
Tip #1: Help Your Child to Understand their Worries
Take the time to listen to your child’s concerns and show you’re listening by giving your child your undivided attention. As you listen, try to help your child pinpoint their worry:
“It sounds like you’re really upset and don’t want to go to school tomorrow. What’s happening at school tomorrow? Will your teacher be there? Did something happen today with your friends that’s making you feel worried? Do you know what you’ll be working on in class tomorrow? Is there going to be a test?
If your child doesn’t know why they’re anxious, that’s OK, there are other ways to help support them. But if you do know what they’re worried about, you can use the tips below to help them boss their worries back.
Tip #2: Help Your Child Solve Their Worry
Try to avoid jumping in with solutions or reassurance. Solutions and reassurance will help your child to feel better in the short-term, but they won’t help your child to develop the skills they need to manage their anxiety longer-term.
Instead, help your child to identify whether there’s anything they can do to make the situation better and brainstorm ideas. For example, if your child’s worried about a spelling test at school one solution might be to set aside 15 minutes each afternoon to practise spelling. Try to sit back and encourage your child to come up with their own solutions. If your child can come up with their own plan of action it’ll help them to feel more in control and more able to cope next time they’re anxious.
Tip #3: Help Your Child Practice Being Brave
Encouraging bravery is the best way to help your child beat their anxiety and worry, so each time your child expresses a desire to avoid an anxiety provoking situation, encourage them to face their fears instead.
If encouragement is all your child needs to face their fears head on, terrific. Offer lots of positive praise after each and every success, and keep on with your practice. If taking a stand against anxiety proves too hard a task, look at how you can help your child to practise being brave in smaller steps. Exactly what that looks like will depend on the nature and severity of your child’s anxiety, but say your child hates being away from you, you might start helping your child to practise being brave by spending short-blocks of time away from you in another room of the house, practising staying home with another adult while you leave the house for 15-minutes, having a half hour playdate at someone else’s house (someone your child is comfortable with) - and then building from there.
Regular practice is key, so however you practise, make sure you practise facing fears at least a couple of times each week.
Tip #4: Use Rewards
Facing fears can be hard, and while you might be able to see the future benefits of your child not relying on avoidance to cope, your child will probably see things differently and need a bit of extra help.
Ask your child to come up with a list of rewards that would help them to feel good about practising facing their fears. For rewards to be effective they have to be meaningful (i.e. something your child actually wants) and delivered on fairly immediately, so if the reward your child wants can’t be given immediately (e.g. a movie with a friend on the weekend) give them a voucher that they can “cash in” at a later date.
Tip #5: Model Bravery
Kids take their lead from us. If they see we’re nervous and stressed, they can mistakenly think the situation they’re in is dangerous or bad, or worse, that we think they can’t cope.
When you’re helping your child practise facing their fears, try to be calm and confident, outwardly at least. It’ll help your child feel like you have confidence in them, which’ll help them to have confidence in themselves.
Tip #6: Help Your Child Boss Back Their Worry
Learn more about this strategy here. [KB to add final link when published]
Our experienced clinicians can discuss your concerns - contact us to learn more.
