Children and Anxiety
When my child is experiencing anxiety?
Children can experience the same thing and have a different reaction or the impact can be so different. A child can go down a really high slide and experience thrill and excitement or fear and nervousness or potentially a combination of all. No two children will experience the same thing in exactly the same way.
Some children will experience difficulty separating from a parent at the school gate, they may struggle to go to bed, go to a playdate in a friend’s house but be happy to have a friend to play at their house. They may be experiencing anxiety. This anxiety could be cyclical, or associated with certain activities, it could also appear to have come out of nowhere or the child could always have been described as a sensitive child.
As a parent it can be really overwhelming and you can struggle to strike the balance between being supportive and understanding, validating their feelings and then supporting them to do the things that scare them or make them feel anxiety.
Whether the anxiety has come on all of a sudden or has been experienced by the child regularly it is important to keep an eye on the child’s habits including feeding, sleeping, connecting with friends and families and any patterns in their behaviour.
The second important aspect is to not define the child, you must not define the child as being anxious, or describe them as being anxious or shy. They are not their feelings. If they are feeling anxious or nervous or shy that is not who they are. If we start to define children by what they feel and what they do not do or we can be the barrier to change or evolving and learning. They are not anxious children but feeling anxious about ….. today or now. This is also true when we talk about the children in relation to their peers or siblings both within the family or to friends and teachers. The child may feel like they need to live up to the title of being an anxious child and let it define them and stop them from doing something.
It is also important to not avoid the things that result in the child experiencing anxiety. If a child is afraid or anxious or feeling unsure about going to birthday parties the avoiding the birthday party might eliminate the feeling of anxiety temporarily but there is a high risk that the anxiety will then attach to another activity, perhaps then to play dates and then to siblings having play dates. Avoiding the anxiety does not help to tackle the anxiety.
If you have a child that feels anxious about going to a birthday party then you must try to support them in going to some part of the party, feeling their fear and moving through it to then realising that they are safe and can go through, they do not need to be on their own or without support. This is not like throwing a child into the deep end of the swimming pool hoping they can swim. But easing them in to build confidence and trust their ability to take control of their feelings is important.
When a child is anxious about something - a parent going out for dinner or being picked up by someone else from school it is important to not tell them too far in advance so they have a longer time to worry and feed their anxiety, with each child there is a balance to strike giving them enough time to process and make a plan so they feel safe and also to not feed their anxiety.
If a child is worrying about something in the future, going to a camp or visiting relatives or going to a big event then it is ok to hear them out and share with them that you have heard how they feel which is fine but maybe you will talk about it again closer to the time. It is important to reassure them that you will talk to them about it again and will stay to chat to them about anything else.
This leads us to tips to sharing worries or anxieties, as it is important that worries do not take over the whole week and all conversations so picking a time in the week or in the day to talk about any worries and giving a time limit ( can be generous) to allow for time to reassure and feel safe but keep the feelings from spilling out all over all conversations. On occasion I have had children write the worry and give it to me to keep in my pocket as a note or a gesture and then I can keep the worry safe till it is the right time to chat. This can be really effective with the just before going to sleep worries, they can hand them over to you to keep safe over night. Some children love a last thought on a white board. They can write/note their last thoughts before going to sleep and you can check in with the notes the following morning and see what is important and needs to be shared and what can be wiped away.
It can be hard to manage and even understand anxiety if you have not experienced it but it is important to know that it is really real for the child experiencing it, validate but do not feed and a last tip the easiest way to explore these things with children is through doing repetitive low demand activities, building lego, doing crafts, taking a walk as it is not face to face or feel invasive you can hear more about what the child is experiencing.
