Looking for things to help your kid with anxiety? Anxiety is a debilitating and frustrating mental health issue affecting millions of Canadians every year. Worst of all it’s affecting people at younger and younger ages. Right now the estimates are that about 3% of youth have or had anxiety according to the Canadian Mental Health Association. Perhaps that doesn’t sound like a lot. But think about it this way – anxiety when left untreated can quickly get out of control. It can lead to depression and has been linked to self-medicating techniques like alcohol and drugs. Anxiety along with mood disorders, like depression, are the most prevalent in our society. Helping anxious children or youth to battle this beast can help them manage their demons in young adulthood.
With that in mind, below you find my top 10 things to help your kid with anxiety all based on the book by Dawn Huebner, Ph.D. titled, What to Do When You Worry Too Much.
1. Reassuring Your Child Doesn’t Help
The first thing to help your kid with anxiety is to recognize that constant reassurance doesn’t help. This is a tough one for all parents to address. When your child comes to you worried about something you want to make it better. The trouble is – the more focus someone puts on worry the bigger it gets. Dawn Huebner uses the analogy of tending to a garden to represent this. But essentially by constantly reassuring your child you are feeding into their anxieties. The reassurances don’t get the response you’re looking for and the child comes back again with the same concern.
So, now you’re thinking, “What do I do?” The key here is to find new tools that are more effective in helping your child to contain anxiety. This is one of the three key principles that Dr. Huebner emphasizes. Containment. Some suggestions are to have a worry box or worry time – sometimes just the act of postponing worry can make small insignificant worries go away.
2. Postponing Worries Creates Containment
The next thing to help your kid with anxiety is to postpone their worries. Sounds strange of course, how can “waiting to worry” work? But the key here is that worrying can spill into every facet of life if given the opportunity. Your child is going to the washroom and worried. Your child is walking to school and worried. Many children worry at bedtime. By setting a time to worry they learn to not permit worry into every part of life. Dr. Huebner explains worry like a jug of milk. Inside the jug, it’s contained, you can move it here and there. Remove that container and it makes a mess and gets into every crook of your fridge (I know, this has happened more times than I like to think about). If worry is not contained – it makes a mess of life.
So, how do you help your child worry at a specific time? You can try several things such as a worry box where your child writes a worry and puts it in. You can try a set time for them to worry (they might even forget to do it!). Or you can take a page out of my mom’s book and throw the worries out the window (OK, it was off our balcony but – you get the picture). The key is – to teach your child to worry less of the time.
3. Encourage Your Child to Do the Thing that Makes them Anxious
This is a key thing to help your kid with anxiety – face their fears. Movies and TV shows often talk about facing your fears. Normally they show someone with a fear of spiders holding one. But sometimes your child gets anxious when walking to school so you might choose to drive them. Or perhaps your child is most anxious to sleep alone in their room, so you let them sleep with you. The trouble is by avoiding the feared situation – it feeds the anxiety.
It might seem heartless or mean to make your child do the thing they’re scared of but, it teaches them something vitally important. It teaches them, they can do it. Successfully facing your fears reinforces your ability to do it and improves your confidence. I remember a professor of mine sharing the story of someone who fears dragons. This person believes that if they pinwheel their arms in the middle of the street, no dragons will attack them. So, they stand in the street and pinwheel their arms, and – no dragon. But, if they don’t stop pinwheeling their arms – how can they learn that it is not their arms wildly flailing about that keeps the dragon away?
It’s a silly example – but great with kids. The moral of this story is – to allow your kids the opportunity to learn that their anxiety is not always going to come to fruition. A word of caution – if your child’s fears are possible (being attacked by a bad guy as an example) remember – it’s possible, but not likely. In these cases, it can be beneficial to provide a balanced view (see the bonus tip for more on this).
4. Help Your Child Learn to Use Logic to Fight Their Anxieties
Another key to help your kid fight anxiety is to use logic. Dr. Huebner suggests that logic helps you to think about the truth behind what you’re afraid of versus what might happen. This one is really useful – especially for children who show an affinity for doing well in school. (In fairness, being a high achiever is often linked to higher rates of anxiety, so this point can really help!)
To use logic effectively you need to apply facts to the fear. If the fear is of a dragon/monster/ or another thing that is impossible or fantastical – logic is very easy. “There’s no such thing as dragons.” or “Monsters don’t exist.” On the other hand, if it’s a possible situation, provide facts. If the child is scared of a car crash – explain how uncommon it is. Further, you can provide a plan for if something did happen. Sometimes parents are concerned that this is “feeding” the anxiety but knowledge is power. If the child believes they can handle a bad situation it’s not as scary.
Sometimes walking through scenarios can help. Let’s say your child is anxious about being forgotten after soccer. Explain that, ” Well, it’s not happened before, but if it did, what could you do?” and let them come up with some ideas. If the idea comes from your child – they have a better chance of believing it, and remembering it and it shows them that they can be resourceful. Let’s face it – life happens and we can’t stop it. By building children’s resilience and resourcefulness now – you’re equipping them for a stronger future.
5. Teach Your Kid to Talk Back … to Worries of Course!
This key to helping your kid fight anxiety requires your child to talk back – but only to the worries (not mom or dad!). When a child talks back it is saying that the child needs to stand up for themself. In the right way, a child can stand up to their parent if they disagree – but that’s for another time. Right now the focus is on defending themself from the anxieties that trouble them. This has the same effect of “thickening one’s skin” or “hardening oneself”. It strengthens the inner voice of your child to help them tell that worry to “Go away!”
If your child finds it helpful or easier (or if your child is particularly visual) have them draw their worry as a creature. Once they have done this they can write down several things they can tell that worry bully (in Dr. Huebner’s terms). This will provide them with something to look at as they practice telling their worries to “Get lost!” or “You’re lying!” or whatever your child comes up with to tell those worries off! After telling it off … the next thing to do is get distracted!
6. Distraction Works
Another key to helping your kid fight anxiety is a distraction. When your child is busy and engaged in an activity their mind does not have space to travel to their worries. Ever notice that your child’s anxieties disappear when they go to the park with their friends? Or if they’re engrossed in a family game night? When children’s attention is elsewhere and fully occupied they don’t focus on their anxieties.
It’s like the scene in Shrek where Donkey doesn’t want to cross the bridge over lava to get to the castle to save Fiona. Shrek distracts Donkey by using movements and playing that he doesn’t know what Donkey doesn’t want. All of a sudden, Donkey’s on the other side of the bridge. While I don’t know that Shrek’s tactics apply to children, the sentiment remains. Keeping your kids distracted decreases their wandering minds.
Some kids are most anxious at night – when there are not a lot of distractions around. Try these distractions: audiobooks, reading to your child or having them read, listening to music, having a sound machine or light machine, and teaching your child to tell themselves a story.
7. Practice, Practice, Practice!
The final key to helping your kid with anxiety is to practice the skills and techniques. As a parent, it can feel like a huge weight is lifted from your shoulders, “Finally, they’re sleeping through the night.” or “Finally, they aren’t asking for reassurance every 5 minutes.” And then… we move on to the next issue. But don’t leave worry tools sitting on the “shelf” collecting dust. With anxiety, it has a terrible tendency to creep back in. It might start slowly but then before you know it, you might feel like you’re back at square one. (That’s OK, if this happens it’s a faster process to get back to this step. Start at the beginning and re-evaluate, re-institute and practice your tools!).
What are some ways to help? Review the strategies before bed or before a situation that would often trigger anxiety. Check-in with your kid, start daily, then a few times a week, and then weekly. Add a reminder to your phone to check how the tools are working for your kid. Try and keep things positive and remember – to be supportive. It’s not easy for an adult to fight their anxiety, it can be harder for a kid!
BONUS TIP – The Balanced View Approach to Realistic Fears
This bonus tip to help your kid fight anxiety is all about a balanced view. Realistic fears are more difficult for children to conquer because they know that their fear could happen. Imagine the child who is afraid of being kidnapped or not chosen for the basketball game or scared that a bad guy might break into their house. These are all possibilities. My first caution here is not to lie. It’s too easy, right? Tell your kid, no that bad guy will never break into our house because we have a dog. If it’s not true – it doesn’t help.
That’s where balanced thinking comes in. Acknowledge that their fear is scary (even if it’s not something you find particularly scary remember that to your child, right now – it truly is). Then talk about the facts as above. Then talk about the possibility of the opposite happening. If your child is afraid to not be picked for the basketball game, what if they are? And what about that child fearful of being kidnapped? There’s not really a good opposite there. Well for that, help your child to think of something positive that could happen but isn’t likely. Do they worry that maybe their parents will win a million dollars? Why not? What makes the bad thing more likely than the good thing? Sometimes maintaining this ability to see two sides of things can really help children find perspective.
What about the child who fears not being picked as a partner for an activity? What if that’s usually what happens? In these types of cases, it can be helpful to figure out the worst case scenario and make a plan. Help your child figure out what they will do and how the can best handle it. Again, having a plan allows your child to feel armed and ready!
That’s It in a Nutshell
And that’s it. Those are my 7 things to help your kid with anxiety (plus a bonus, not from the book) based on Dr. Dawn Huebner’s book What to Do When You Worry too Much. If you found this helpful and want more info – make sure you check out her book it’s on Amazon, Indigo/Chapters, and likely at your local library! Don’t forget, when you’re helping your child with their anxiety – it could be possible that you too have anxiety. This book can help you too. It can be a great bonding experience when you complete the challenges together! As always, keep striving for your mental health!
Written by Angela Rozema, a registered psychotherapist, practicing in Ontario, Canada she takes pride in providing useful articles for anyone who wants to apply some therapy to their lives. The information here was based on Dr. Dawn Huebner’s book, What to Do When You Worry too Much: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Anxiety. The information here does not take the place of a professional. If you or your child struggle with anxiety, reach out for help. Psychotherapists and other mental health professionals can help. If you need to, try your doctor or a clinic.
Looking for some more information on anxiety perhaps for yourself or someone else? Check out these resources from DrugWatch:
