When your child is anxious, it’s natural as a parent to want to help them feel better. However, when you try to protect kids from the things that upset them, you can accidentally make anxiety worse. The best way to help kids overcome anxiety is to teach children to welcome anxiety and resolve it. Teach them how to deal with it.
Spotting Signs of Anxiety in Children
It’s normal for children to be scared or nervous from time to time. If you’re unsure whether this is a problem, you’re already taking the first step. According to John Piacentini, PhD, and Lindsey Bergman, PhD, experts from the UCLA Child Anxiety Resilience Education and Supports (CARES) Center, here are some signs your child may be struggling with anxiety:
Headaches or stomach aches (with no reason for them)
Won’t use bathrooms except at home
Is restless, fidgety, hyperactive, or distracted (even without having ADHD)
Starts to shake or sweat in intimidating situations
Cries a lot
Is very sensitive
Becomes grouchy or angry without any clear reason
Is afraid of making even minor mistakes
Has panic attacks
Don’t Avoid Things Just Because They Make a Child Anxious
It might be tough as a parent to see your child uncomfortable, but this will ultimately decrease their anxiety over time. Helping children avoid the things they are afraid of will only make them feel better in the short term, but it will reinforce the anxiety over the long run. Best way to help kids overcome anxiety isn’t to try to remove stressors that trigger it. It’s to help them learn to tolerate their anxiety and function as well as they can, even when they’re anxious.
Tips to Conquering Anxiety
Instead you can teach them ways to conquer their anxiety like breathing techniques, distinguishing the difference between real threats and false alarms, or trying the stepladder approach. The stepladder approach is about helping them face their fears one small step at a time. Work with your child to come up with a list of the steps they can take to face their fears and meet their overall goal. You can also help your children change the channel. If your child is anxious about something out of their control, help them get their mind off the anxiety. Discuss the fact that they can only control how they respond and then help them take their mind off it. Maybe you can try encouraging them to do another activity instead.
Emotional Resolution
Ignoring anxiety or any emotion is never the answer, for both adults and kids alike. Emotional Resolution with Cedric Bertelli can help you conquer and fully resolve from those unwelcome emotions. EmRes, or Emotional Resolution, connects you to the origin of a difficult emotion through your physical sensations and modulates the unwanted emotional response permanently. The goal of EmRes is to reintegrate and recover these pieces that traumatic events stole from our life. To learn more about practicing EmRes, click HERE to learn more.