Helping Your Anxious Child Feel Safe

Some children are born with the ability to see what could go wrong in the future and to think of ways to prepare for it. At times, this skill is a gift and can help with planning for success, completing schoolwork, and preparing for the future. At other times, this can be crippling, making even the simplest things difficult for you and your child to accomplish. When anxiety takes over, it is important to walk the fine line of enough help but not too much. Here are some things that I find really help when everyday activities feel too much for your child.

1. Rate the fears. A simple 1 to 10 scale, where 10 is as scary or as hard as possible, and 1 is not that hard or scary, is really helpful in managing anxiety. In preschool, children use small, medium or large as a rating scale. This helps because anxiety tells us that everything is overwhelming at a 10. When we start rating how hard things are, we start to realize that not all things are a 10, which alone reduces how scary the world can feel.  Seeing things as being hard but not overwhelming is a useful way to phrase things.
2. Separate helpful from unhelpful anxiety. Helpful anxiety reminds us of practical things we need to do, like “Did I leave the stove on?” “Do I have math homework?”. When anxiety is practical, it is useful. Respond to the thought and make a plan to solve the problem. Unhelpful anxiety is vague. Examples of this are “What if I make a mistake and my whole family dies?” “What if everyone secretly hates me?” These thoughts are like your brain bullying you. With these thoughts, it is helpful to do things like talk back to the brain bully, switch thoughts (covered more in step 3), or distract yourself with happier thoughts or activities.
3. Talk about “owie” or “red” thoughts which upset or freeze us, and “band-aid” or “green” thoughts that help us to move forward. Noticing when anxiety is telling us upsetting stories and changing them into more helpful stories is very empowering.
4. Distraction. When a worry is not solvable, creating a list of happy, funny, or interesting things to switch your thoughts to can be really helpful.
5. Celebrate mistakes as essential to learning. Often, anxious people avoid doing things because failure feels overwhelming. When this happens, we are misunderstanding that failure is a sign that we are growing and learning.  Once we aim for learning, mistakes show us that we are changing and doing new things.
6. Create a calming environment in the home. This can be done through the. practical setup of the home, but also through calming routines done together as a family. Reading books, listening to music, praying, or meditating together are all examples.
7. Create coping skills lists for everyone in the family and model helpful coping as the grown-ups. Coping skills or activities that bring us joy or peace are useful to do regularly and to do on purpose when feeling overwhelmed. Having lists for all family members, along with kits of things ready to use when overwhelmed, can be really helpful. Coping skills should be healthy, cost little to no money, and be varied. Overusing any single coping skill can become a problem, so encourage longer lists. Making these lists takes time since trying different things to see what you like is a process.
8. Using your calm to help them find calm. Emotions are contagious, including emotions like peace, calm, and joy. When your child is overwhelmed, using your nervous system to help them regulate is a really powerful tool. Try to keep yourself calm and use your calming voice and body language to help them calm down. Doing this repeatedly helps wire their brain to learn to calm down.
9. Deep Breathing. Using breathing like sip sign, two bells, flower and candle, or square breathing can help calm the body down.

Be gentle with yourself and your child. Change takes time, usually several months. You will all make mistakes in the process. With effort and support, you can help your child learn to calm their nervous system.