How to Help Your Anxious Child
It was our pleasure to host a workshop on November 22nd, looking at how families can support their child with anxiety and the event created lots of discussion around the subject. Although the session was focused on those with autism spectrum disorders, it’s clear that anxiety affects lots of other children as well and the strategies shared at the workshop can be used to help all children who struggle with anxiety.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is described as a state of inner turmoil or unpleasant feelings of dread about anticipated events. It is not the same as fear, which is the normal response to an imminent threat, but instead is the expectation of a future threat.
Anxiety in children
Many children, like people in general, may experience some sort of anxiety from time to time as they develop. Some infants and toddlers go through periods of separation anxiety and lots of children are anxious around animals if they are not used to being around them. As they grow, social anxieties may become more of a concern if a child is struggling with shyness or has trouble making friends at school. Often children will get past their anxiety with time, but sometimes the anxiety has a greater impact on their everyday life or shows no sign of abating, at which point strategies to help them manage it become very important.
Helping your child
One of the first things to realize when trying to help an anxious child is that overcoming anxiety takes time and it takes patience. Often it can be stressful trying to manage an anxious child amidst the day-to-day pressures of everyday life; trying to get them to school, to a dental appointment or meeting strange dogs on the street. However, how you manage your own stress and anxieties is a big part of helping your child to successfully manage their own. Not only do kids respond to our behaviours, but they also learn from them as well.
Top 5 Tips:
1. SMALL STEPS – Don’t expect your child to get over their anxiety overnight. Break down the anxiety into smaller goals and work on each small step. For example, if your child is afraid of dogs, make the first step just watching videos of dogs or watching someone else pet a dog from a window. Your child will be more likely to be successfully and you will gain confidence in the process.
2. BE CONSISTENT – Reinforce brave behavior and keep your expectations consistent. Don’t raise or lower your expectations because of anxious behavior.
3. KEEP YOUR OWN EMOTIONS IN CHECK – It is exhausting parenting an anxious child. Try your best to stay calm and plan to do exposure exercises when you and your child are calm and allow lots of time.
4. MODEL BRAVE BEHAVIOR – Children pick up a lot of what we model. For example, both you and your child might be anxious about the transition to school but instead of saying “Mom is going to go now, are you sure you’re going to be ok?” model “brave talk”! Say something like “I know school might seem scary but Mom will be back and I know you can be brave.”
5. PROVIDE INFORMATION – Many kids are anxious of the unknown, the more information you can give your child about what to expect the more you can decrease their anxiety. For example, if your child has anxiety about going to the doctor, use a social story to give your child information of what the doctor office looks like, what things the doctor might do and what your child can do if he/she feels anxious.
Which of these strategies do you find helps you the most? We’d love to hear how these strategies help you to help your child.