Parenting an anxious child can be emotionally draining and anxiety provoking! As parents we are often wired to do whatever we can to make certain our children’s pain and suffering are at a minimum. When parenting a child with anxiety—one who refuses to take risks or try new things, asks a million questions every day, and often lashes out when feeling anxious,parents can easily become upset, overwhelmed, and angry. We may yell and get frustrated and discouraged, which often only makes a child’s anxiety worse (a vicious cycle).
Therefore, when we are dealing with anxiety in children, our gut instinct is to reassure them, tell them to relax and do whatever it takes to relieve them of the anxiety, and spare ourselves the stress that goes along with trying to support them. Unfortunately, this approach is only a short term fix, and often serves to make the anxiety worse. I know this sounds crazy, but what a child with anxiety really needs is to be able to FACE the anxiety head on, as often as s/he can tolerate.
A brain’s response to an anxiety provoking situation is normally a functional one that keeps us out of danger. When the brain senses danger it reacts with the “fight or flight” response. This causes the body to respond either by fighting off the danger or fleeing from it (to avoid it). However, in the anxious brain there is often no REAL danger—only a perceived danger. The brain is confusing things and misfiring. It is either over reacting to the situation or sensing danger where there is none. Every time a child reacts to the brain’s message as if s/he is in real danger, a connection between the alarm center of the brain (the amygdala) and the thinking part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) gets stronger with regard to the feared situation, and the fear become reinforced. The child’s reaction to the feared situation will continue to grow stronger as long as that connection is maintained, and the brain thinks it is doing the right thing by having this fear reaction. The anxiety reaction will happen again and again until the connection is broken, rerouted, and changed, and the false alarm no longer elicits anxiety.
An effective way to disrupt the connection from perceived fear to anxious reaction is to face the anxious situation and DO NOTHING. Allow the anxiety to happen and allow oneself to get through it. The child needs to feel the anxiety, but not react to it and then let it subside. This facing and doing nothing essentially retrains the brain that the anxious feeling does not need to create an anxious reaction. Eventually and overtime that initial anxious reaction will diminish in scope, and the feared event will no longer cause fear. Then the message to the brain is, “No, brain, you were wrong, I was NOT in real danger in that situation and I am not going to let you trick me again into thinking that I am, I am stronger than you think I am.”
Along these lines, the following are some basic ideas for helping your child overcome the anxiety.
- Do your best to stay calm when your child is feeling anxious. If you need to take a time out for a minute to help ground yourself, DO SO!
- Listen to and observe your child’s feelings, and talk with him/her about them. BUT try not to reassure your child. You can validate his/her feelings, but ultimately you need to help him/her tolerate the feelings without solving the problem for them. The long term goal is to help your child learn that s/he can live with some anxiety, fear and discomfort. The goal is NOT to help him/her be anxiety free, that’s just not realistic for anyone. The better able they to tolerate some discomfort and to know that they will be ok, the more equipped they will be in dealing with anxiety if/when it crops up again.
- Gently encourage/challenge your child by exposing him/her to the feared situations in gradual steps, slowly and overtime. Eventually this will allow your child to see that that s/he need not be afraid (i.e. look at photos of dogs, if they can do that, can they stand 10 feet from a real dog? And then can they stand closer? Can they touch a dog?, etc.).
- Praise(and reward) any accomplishments/efforts your child makes towards overcoming their anxiety, and encourage your child to take one step each time, no matter how little, towards combatting the anxiety.
- Use humor and try to have fun with it! Humor can lessen an anxious moment by defusing it. Encourage your child to talk back to the anxiety, role play talking back, make it fun and funny! Personify the anxiety, make it a mean bully or an angry monster, and talk about how one would respond to a bully, by standing up to it.
- Prepare your child ahead of time for new situations. Help them understand what to expect, show them pictures, tell them about what it will be like.
- If you know a situation is going to be particularly stressful, modify your expectations so the child does not feel like s/he has failed. Set the expectations ahead of time so your child knows what is expected.
- Establish a support system for your child for when s/he is not with you. Identify people to help him/her in situations outside of the home.
- Educate yourself and your child on how anxiety works and what it is (see below for helpful books and websites on this).
- Set aside a prescribed time each day for “worry time” (15 minutes), and allow your child to discuss whatever s/he is worried about at that time. At other times, encourage your child to put the worries away until the allotted time frame.
- Seek treatment when strategies such as the above mentioned are not working on their own.
For more information, please see:
Websites:
www.kimberlyjoymorrow.com
www.adaa.org
www.worrywisekids.org
Books:
Chansky, Tamar (2004). Freeing Your Child from Anxiety
Huebner, D. (2005). What to Do When You Worry Too Much.
Huebner, D. (2007). What to Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck.
Marsh, John S. (2006). Talking Back to OCD.
